MADISON (WKOW) — Winter is alive in Madison. For one UW-Madison graduate student, that means finally constructing a sculpture on Lake Wingra.

“Oh my god, it feels so good because last week we were going to, but our U-Haul died, so honestly we were like oh man how are we going to get this done, but we’re finally getting it done,” Ian Chandler, UW-Madison graduate student and project director said.

Latvian artist Ojars Feldbergs remotely designed the piece titled “Dying Iceberg.” After months of virtual meetings with artists and organizers, the sculpture went up Saturday.

“It’s supposed to draw attention to icebergs and the fleeting nature of them,” Chandler said. “We think of them as big glacial large masses, just really present objects, but when it comes down to it, they’re not.”

Winter is Alive! features art installations throughout the Madison area and online.

Tamsie Ringler, the founding director and artistic curator of Winter is Alive!, says she she wanted it to involve a broad number of artistic voices, including sculptural, performance and narrative artists, to visualize climate change.

“Solutions to the climate crisis have to be global, they have to include a really broad variety of voices in this,” she said.

Art installations like “Dying Iceberg” are meant to start conversations about climate change and have people reflect on its effects.

Ringler considers the climate crisis to be the pressing issue of our time.

“It really is a question of preservation, the preservation of our civilization,” Ringler said. “And it is that pressing.”