Ice has been good to Peter Slavin. Very good.

Quite possibly, Slavin is the only man in Philadelphia who is an international ice sculptor and performance artist.

Six-foot-five, a fan of Tom Waits with similar facial-hair landscaping and baritone scratch, Slavin's the iceman goeth.

He travels the globe, logging 148,000 miles annually, as a founder of Fear No Ice, the "world's first and only performance ice sculpting company."

It's like Blue Man Group. In white. On ice.

The performers play corporate events, car introductions, beer festivals, the Winter Olympics, Enron's last Christmas party. The Ice Age movies have been a frozen bonanza. And it's pricey ice: $10,000 and up. At the end of a show, Slavin or a partner exits atop a frozen motorbike - an icecycle.

In a dozen years of doing ice, the 45-year-old Slavin has made plenty of cold cash, acquiring a Porsche 911 Carrera in his driveway and a Land Rover out front in Philadelphia's Pelham neighborhood, where he lives with his wife, Elaina, and their 4-year-old, Miles.

"I wanted to be a rock star, but I can't hold a tune," Slavin says, sitting in his center-hall Colonial, the house ice built. "Instead, I hold a chain saw."

Seven, to be precise. He usually travels with two, plus chisels, dies, and angle grinders.

The second business, Big Ice, creates large sculptures, ice houses, ice bars - an entire working bar carved from ice.

"I like ice because you have to work very fast," Slavin says, offering a glass of cold tea. No ice. "It's very organic and clean. Plus, the medium creates such excitement. That's the magic of it. People take a look at it and say, 'Wow, that's water.' "

Slavin has won top medals at 110 ice-carving competitions, his David being a 14-foot, one-ton praying mantis that took 44 hours to sculpt with Japanese ice artist Junichi Nakamura. It won first place at the 2007 world ice championships, in Fairbanks.

His third business, Fear No Ice Philadelphia, located in a Port Richmond warehouse, creates ice sculptures for local events. He offers ice-carving workshops, which will resume after Labor Day.

Slavin was cool before he worked cold. He grew up on Long Beach Island, studied art at Parsons School of Design, attended culinary school, and became an executive chef for Hyatt in Hawaii, California, and New York. He watched an ice sculptor work in a butcher room and earn $400 in no time, and thought, "I can do better than that."

And so he has.

Slavin launched Fear No Ice with fellow executive chefs Scott Rella (Waldorf-Astoria) and Kevin Roscoe (The Plaza) when they all grew tired of the constant tyranny of the kitchen. Rella decamped to Vail, Roscoe to Seattle, while Slavin came here. They're still great friends as well as successful partners. The company has grown to include five associate carvers, including Slavin's Philadelphia protege, Don Lowing, "who now sculpts better than I do."

Ice is physically and mentally exhausting. "You're putting these multiple blocks together like a puzzle," Slavin says. "And your dimensions are constantly changing, because ice melts at a half-inch an hour at room temperature."

The worst thing about ice? "It's not permanent. I feel like I've never been taken seriously as an artist," he says. "That's my biggest frustration. People find out you're an ice carver, and they think you do swans on cruise ships."

Instead, Slavin will fly first-class tomorrow to create frozen art at a Beverly Hills birthday party. A cherry picker will deposit a huge block of ice on an island in the center of a swimming pool. There, with his chain saws and grinders, Slavin will create two men holding up the Earth in their hands.

Contact columnist Karen Heller at 215-854-2586 or kheller@phillynews.com.

For more information, go to www.fearnoice.com. To inquire about ice-sculpting classes, e-mail info@fearnoice.com.