Deal With The Cold Like Minnesota: Freeze Your Pants Into Pants Sculptures

By Mae Rice in News on Jan 22, 2016 3:12PM

A Minnesota man has started making the most of the cold by soaking his pants, freezing them, and then leaving his creations standing in yards and sidewalks around Minneapolis.

“I mostly do it for my neighbor, Diane,” Tom Grotting told ABC News. “The winter gets a little long and she doesn’t like winter very much so it’s mostly entertainment for Diane.”

He first started making pants-art, if you will, a few years ago, during the polar vortex, according to ABC. His creations have gone viral recently, after he posted a photo to the Facebook group I Love NE Minneapolis.

Here is Grotting’s process, according to ABC: After soaking the pants in water, he takes them outside and sculpts them as they freeze—a process that, during a Minnesota winter, takes less than 30 minutes.

He then puts the frozen-solid pants around town. Here’s a shot of two pairs of pants from Grotting’s Instagram; they appear to be deep in pants-conversation:

They really evoke nothing more than the Dr. Seuss story about pale green pants with nobody inside them.

Unless you’re Grotting’s teenage kids, that is, in which case the free-standing pants evoke run-of-the-mill embarrassment.

“The kids hate it,” Grotting told ABC. “My daughter is in the band and had a big rehearsal with the trumpet players and she texted me and said, ‘Dad, the trumpets saw the pants.’”