Coming up on Gallery America, we meet Landice Mullins and the Oklahoma City Figure Skating Club to see what it takes to succeed in figure skating.

Then we head to Wisconsin to learn the art of ice sculpture.

Finally, we go to Florida to peek into the world of roller skating.

All that coming up now.

Hello, Oklahoma.

Welcome to Gallery America.

You may have seen figure skating on the Olympics.

Those routines may only be a few minutes long, but they represent the culmination of years of hard work.

So today, we're going to the Oklahoma City Figure Skating Club to peel back the curtain on what it takes to succeed.

Check it out.

going out on the ice by yourself is actually it's really scary.

when you're out there on your own, it's all on you.

it's a really big mind game, if you start doubting yourself, that's when it really gets hard.

a skater has to have their inner push in themselves to train so hard.

you really have to want it, and I just want it so bad, I. I think a lot of people look at it an easier sport.

That's because we train for hours a day on ice and off ice our job is to make it look effortless.

I typically get to the rink and do a good 20 30 minute warmup and then I'll skate sometimes two, three hours a day, It's.

Name is Landice Mullins.

I am a national qualifying and collegiate figure skater we really have to practice what we're going to compete.

So it's running our programs every day.

do sections over and over, and I love jumping, I I love training jumps.

did have to grow to love my spins and edges When I was little, I wasn't a huge fan of them, but now I think they're really fun.

a lot of people don't realize how hard it is on your body knees, ankles, hips common injuries we have on the ice.

So we have a weight room here and a certified strength and conditioning coach,.

Here we go We're going to go.

Wobble.

Run forwards and backwards.

go.

there's a lot of strength is needed to be able to stay the ice and stay healthy.

She gives us exercises that are meant to help strengthen, our knees and our joints.

so any athlete that comes to train with me, I'm always thinking long term athletic development.

I want them to Want to be a durable, resilient human.

Their whole life.

Well, I get the benefit of being the Landice’s coach, but first and foremost, I get to be her mom.

she has a love of it.

There's not a single day that she doesn't want to be on the ice.

when I was younger, my parents had the Winter Olympics on the TV figure skating was playing, and I bothered them for months.

until they put me in the learn to skate.

she was one of those very coachable, eager to learn athletes.

She showed up on the ice, signing up for learn to Skate, just like athletes do across the country.

when they're young and they fall in love with it because it's super fun.

It's fun to be with your friends, and out there continuing to grow and learn.

And then you have these checkpoints of competitions and tests along the way that continue to inspire them it can become anything that you want to, to become.

can be where you skate once a week or you skate six days a week.

we learn together at the learn to skate level.

Get And then some athletes will branch off and do private instruction Okay.

Watch your triple.

that coach is Then hopefully part of your life for many, many years to come.

“A through and in there's athletes I've trained for 20 years S”o don't think about lifting the knee up and down when you come.

Make sure you feel like you just get those ankles together.” I love it so much.

And it feels so free and fun Good to walk through one like that.

When I feel like music, all my thoughts just kind of like, go away.

And I get into zone of just skating and enjoying it.

I got you, I really love the sport of figure skating and just the friendships that I built along the way.

we try to be very intentional in building that relationship.

And that rapport even though a lot of figure skat it's about building those relationships and cheering for each other the first moment you step on the ice for me is just it's magic.

The glide, the feeling of the wind the crisp coolness, the smell, I'm not only club president, I'm also a figure skating coach.

it’s been, a lifelong passion.

So for me, it's just continuing that journey and making sure that we're protecting our, core values as a club to continue on for the next generations.

There you go.

You're gliding.

i got you.

that family aspect, where you're invited to the graduations and you're invited to the weddings and you celebrate all the life milestones are fostered through that athlete coach, parent relationship, Yeah.

Today we're celebrating Valentine's Day and you'll see there's going to be a big party going on for our learn to skate classes.

Things like that.

It brings everyone together, connected through sport.

I want my kids to still have a fun, experience celebrating holidays.

again, that's just part of building that community.

Jackie's done a really good job at creating a culture of coaches and skaters that all support each other.

I am 26 years old.

I came back to skating as an adult three years ago.

I'm training for my fourth Adult national championships.

It's been really fun getting to do jumps that I didn't do as a kid when we're in our spin, we're thinking about our positioning so we're not looking around us or ahead of us.

If you start looking out while you're spinning, that's when you get dizzy.

But we just think about our position.

So our focus isn't on the fact that we're spending really, I think a really proud coaching moment is also when they not only have success on the ice, but then they grow up to be this, like, wonderful person in the community.

definitely a full circle moment, to watch your kids, grow up in the program and then be able to give back to the program.

she's had such grace filled and wonderful mentors she's able to now pass that on to the athletes she works with as well.

gather back and crazy.

it was really hard at first to watch athletes fall like repeatedly fall.

a lot of times people equate falling to failure.

But how are they failing if they pick themselves back up and they go and they try again, when I was growing if I had a bad day or if I had a death in the family, I would come out here and I would just take it all out on the ice.

I call it ice therapy.

I 100% want to keep skating as long as I can.

I'm I've never stopped loving skating.

I just keep loving it, even on the hard days.

It's just a sport about grace and strength.

And it's not always pretty.

But I love it.

You can learn more about the Oklahoma City Figure Skating Club on their website, OKC FCc dot net, and follow Landice on Instagram.

At Landice skates.

So we've seen what artists can do on the ice.

Now let's see what artists can do with the ice.

We're headed to Wisconsin to meet Master Ice sculptor Max Zuleta In order to become an ice sculpture, you need to have not only the artistic skills, the endurance to get the sculpture done, but the discipline.

You're in a in a freezer for for many hours a day and or in a winter festival.

It's a very challenging material, and there's a lot of logistical things that go along with ice sculpting, like the drainage of the of the water in an event in an at room temperature event.

So it is very hard, but but it's very rewarding.

You do ask yourself continuously, why why am I doing this?

Is this going to melt?

But the beautiful thing about ice sculptures is, is that is that it teaches us that beauty is not permanent, teaches you to enjoy what you have in front of you, and make the most out of it.

One of the secrets of.

In that crystal clear block of ice.

Two of the two of the secrets.

One is we purify the water.

We have a reverse osmosis system, a water softener, and then the industrial filter.

So this is better than Evian water.

Super clean water.

And then the other secret is the motion.

These pumps make the molecules of water to freeze really, really, really tie together.

That's why the ice is so crystal clear.

And it's so dense, so strong as motion is the biggest secret.

There was no ice sculpting in school in Venezuela.

That's usually taught in culinary school.

So the only way for me to learn was to try to learn from somebody.

So I was begging for, like, three months to a year to a chef, in Caracas in Venezuela.

And, so he took me in.

He told me some basic principles of ice sculpting.

And then I started going to competitions all over the States and Canada and Europe.

My purpose in the those in that time was just to learn as much as possible.

So I had to balance between doing my sculptures, doing trying to do well in the competition, at the same time trying to learn as much as I can and trying to learn of their techniques and tools.

In those days, we didn't have chainsaws or chainsaws were not applied to ice sculpting.

Yes.

So it was, you know, like a Hansel and ice picks and chisels to be able to carve a sculpture with only a handsaw.

Oh, I have I had so many stitches all over the place.

And then it's also a physical job.

These are 300 pound blocks of ice.

And at that point they felt like this is this is one of the most difficult things in the world.

Why am I doing this?

I what was the most difficult thing at the time, which was learning how to carve with only handles and chisels?

Now I have the technology.

I have massive CNC machines and every tool that I can get.

But having the skills of starting really, really, really hard and having having the skills to create a sculpture with only a hands, a handsaw, a chisel.

When somebody wants to start over, I'm like, start, you know, with a basic tools and just create your, your, your skills based on, on very limited amount of tools.

And then eventually you develop and you add more tools into it.

But you have a really good foundation for your technique.

26 years ago, I had an offer to work in Paris, or I had the option of buying a company in Chicago.

That deal didn't go through, so I decided, okay, I'm going to open my own company, but I'm going to move a little bit north.

I mean, it's Milwaukee, Madison, Lake Geneva, all the way up to green Bay.

And at this moment I'm inspired by people, by the effect my ice sculptures create on people.

I am grateful that I come in, in people's lives, in very special times, in their life, in their wedding or their anniversary or a birthday or a bar mitzvah.

I think there's there's a lot of things that we do that translate into, you can do whatever you want.

If we can create this ice sculpture out of a block of ice, you can go home and do whatever you want.

You can create your own masterpieces into any material that you want, and you can overcome any challenge.

If you can amaze and inspire people, that's that's the best thing you can do.

One other beautiful thing about ice sculpting is that it.

Allow me.

Like, I had some ideas and I'm like, how can I get this out of my head?

How can I get this into into a material?

And so at the end of the day, you feel like, it feels it feels good to be able to translate something into it, into a block of ice.

So in this show, we've learned about ice skating.

We've learned about just ice.

Now it's time for just skating.

We're headed to Tampa to learn the art and culture of roller skate.

Let's check it out.

Skating was my first love.

Before my wife, like before I got married and had kids, skating was my first love.

I started skating actually downtown in Central Park after that.

I've been skating at United Skates for over 30 years, so skating is my happy place.

I think it's so corny to say, but the skating saved me.

There is a lot of things that I've gone through in my life, just personally, that I had no outlet for, and I really didn't know how to express myself any other way.

But when I started skating, it was just freeing for me.

Like not only the music, not only just being able to express myself, but finding people that were just so positive, so caring and just ready to help.

I never experienced that in my life before.

Outside of my family, skating makes me feel alive.

Like when I hit the floor, it's like just me on the floor and the music.

Everything else inside your reality just melts away.

Skating puts me on.

Cloud nine is my release on life.

It's my break.

It's.

It's my love.

I think roller skating really is an art.

Because everything we do, it's just seen in our movement.

Like, there's no talking involved.

I could see a skater rolling around the floor, and I can just feel their energy.

And I feel like when you watch someone who's skating, no matter what style it is, you can interpret everything that person is bringing to the floor at that point.

With roller skating, you put your own twist and flavor to it.

Once you're comfortable on your skates, I just feel like it's endless.

What you can do.

The skating community in Tampa is is changing as far as like there's a lot of different people from a lot of different places.

So we get people from Virginia, people from Chicago, New York, D.C.

so it's just starting to be a melting pot of different skaters in Tampa.

Usually you go out of state to see different skaters, so it's just getting to be where you can see a little bit of everything in the house.

The styles of skating I'll give you a rundown of them.

Fast backwards is from Philly.

They skate fast backwards all the time.

For some reason, no matter what the song is fast back.

You have on JB, which is out of Chicago.

James Brown music.

A lot of the music that they have, they take samples from James Brown's music and put that in there.

They do remixes and they take the original and mix.

It also.

My main style would be fast, backwards and jv's loved it ever since I got introduced to it.

The style of that skate is New York, new Jersey style, which is to me my favorite.

They do a lot of pivots and turns and spins and stuff like that.

Trains and trails is a part of New York, new Jersey style.

That's what normally trio is.

Three holding hands would have a movement all together in unison, and 101 trains could be from 4 to 15 people, even 20 or 30 people.

Then you have sliders which you have two different kind of sliders.

You have Chicago slides where they're doing more of a split, like they're come from halfway off the floor, and then they're going to get down low on one leg, and then they go into a split, and then you have, a slider that comes from Detroit, where there have all four wheels on the ground and every turn is sideways and sliding across the floor, either with the train of people.

So they do more of the old school artistic style skating.

But, I mean, they're very smooth with it.

I don't have a specific style that I do, I like a little bit of everything.

I just feel like, you know, I want to be diverse and be able to go to Chicago and do a little bit of JB, go to New York and still be able to get on a train.

I just try to stay diverse.

I don't want to just do one style.

Skating inspired me to, I guess, just become the man and the husband and the father that I am today.

I mean, I met my wife at the skating rink.

My kids are into skating, and I want to have a legacy where people from the Tampa Bay area remember me, say, oh, I remember Big Al.

Yeah, he used to skate at United skates.

Or, you know, he used to host a skate party or someone that love skating and, you know, wanted to continue in the next generation and the next generation.

I just think it's a real experience in the energy that you get at the skating rink.

You wouldn't see it anywhere else but at the skating rink.

You want to see it at a hockey event.

You don't see it at, ice skating rink.

It's just roller skate just has a different energy.

It just feels like you can light up the whole neighborhood just with the energy that's in the rink.

I don't know, it makes me smile just thinking about it.

The Tampa Bay skating community is very much a family.

I've never experienced anything like it.

I feel like we all have the same passion, we share the same values and all just shines through skating.

So it's something that we just can do together to forget about everything else, I think.

I mean, people are always friendly when you come to skating because you're you're here doing the same thing that this other person enjoys, whether they're old or young.

You know, intermediate skater, beginner skater is just for the love of skating.

You know, we're always welcoming anybody that wants to come and try it on and just, you know, enjoy yourself.

You know, I don't think I would never stop.

Even if I get an older age, I think I'm going to continue to keep skating.

It's a way of life.

Well, that's all the time we have for Gallery America.

Thank you so much for joining us.

As always, you can see past episodes by going to our website oeta.tv/gallery America.

And don't forget to follow us on Instagram at oetagallery We'll see you next time.

Till then.

Stay.

Oklahoma!