As Marysville residents fetch their daily allotment of bills and advertisements from their mailbox, they are most likely unaware that these mundane objects have been delivered by an Olympic gold medalist.

Chan Kitburi, a mail carrier who works out of the main Marysville post office, earned his prized medal not for his athletic prowess, but for his artistic abilities in an unsual medium-ice.

The soft-spoken native of Thailand didn't discover his talent until about 17 years ago. His older brother, Kla, a chef and caterer, needed a banquet table centerpiece for a wedding, and he asked Chan to give it a try. After a perfunctory lesson in ice carving, Kitburi was let loose on a chunk of ice, and a pair of kissing doves emerged.

"My brother went to art school and he taught me how to draw," said Kitburi. "He was my only art teacher."

The success of that initial creation ignited a fire in the mail carrier, and he embarked upon a secondary career as an ice sculptor. Through the late 1990s and into the next decade, he created thousands of ice carvings for private functions and began to enter--and win--competitions.

In 2002, he traveled to the Winter Olympics in Ogden, Utah, with his teammate Ron Meyn of Milwaukee, to compete in the Cultural Olympiad, an Olympic-sponsored event held in conjunction with the worldwide athletic competition.

Working with ten 300-pound blocks of ice, each of the qualifying ice sculpting teams spent two days chipping and carving and assembling their world-class artistic creations.

"We were working right at the bottom of the downhill ski event," Kitburi recalled, "and we attracted large crowds. It was very exciting."

Kitburi was also a member of the Olympic team during the 2006 games in Turin, Italy. He proudly displays his Olympic gold medal along with many other awards, trophies and certificates-one signed by then-Alaska governor Sarah Palin-earned in various competitions.

In 2011, his four-man team won the Abstract Award in the Alaska World Ice Art Championship event with an amazingly detailed rendering of a sculpture entitled "Clock of Salvador Dali." The fantastic conception was created from ice blocks that are harvested from a nearby frozen lake.

He also captured first place at Lake Chelan's Winterfest in early 2011. He was hoping to return for that event this month, but because of his day job at the post office, he was unable to confirm his attendance until after the registration deadline.

Kitburi and his wife Tina are the parents of four sons, ages 17 to 24, and Chan's goal is to see the boys team up for an ice carving event. All of them have worked alongside their father and are learning the necessary skills but, as in all things, some are more interested in the art than others.

As an artistic medium, ice is one of the most transient. Even before a sculpture is completed, it has begun to melt, and even the best-kept ice carving will dissolve into a pool of water in time.

Kitburi is okay with that.

"Ice carving teaches you not to hold on to things," he said pragmatically. "You learn to let it go, to let everything go back to nature."

"Art is in the making."

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