FROZEN FOOTPRINTS & ICY IMPACTS
SNOW ART
Artists Sonja Hinrichsen and Simon Beck make their marks in the snow, creating large scale installations of remarkable beauty. They take the simple act of walking and transform planes of virgin snow into stunning mega “canvasses.”
Snowy swaths of mountain sides, fields, and valleys become patterned with deliberate footsteps. Each artist has their own style and their own spirit. Beck's newest tramplings are geometrically inspired, taking their cues from mathematical forms, nature's spirals, fractals and other freeform delights.
Photo: Snow Drawings in Colorado, by Sonja Hinrichsen.
This environmental artist wants to leave a footprint on the earth. Many footprints, in fact, purposefully, marking out a plan, turning snow covered surfaces into canvasses for her land art installations.
Sonja Hinrichsen designs and creates geometric patterns in the snow by strategically walking around, using different types of shoes. She creates art with her feet.
Using photo and video-mapping, recorded sounds, and written notes, Hinrichsen illustrates stories she gathers from both interviews and secondary historical/societal or natural/ecological/geological research. All of these bit and pieces come together to form the visions for the snow drawings.
Photo: Snow Drawings in Colorado, by Sonja Hinrichsen.
She transformed frozen landscapes of California, New Mexico and Upstate New York. She prefers land with minimal obstacles, like open fields and frozen lakes.
Hinrichsen enlists local communities in order to create the bigger drawings. Many of the patterns can only be seen in their entirety from the air, last only for a few days at the most, and can require up to 60 volunteers and 120 snowshoes to complete.
She’s aiming to move farther north to Alaska, Iceland, Greenland, Northern Finland, and the Yukon where she’ll have more snow to work with and a longer season.
Photo: Snow Drawings Transforming Frozen Lakes, by Sonja Hinrichsen.
Lately Hinrichsen's works have often included interventions or rituals that are documented photographically and on video, which then becomes integrated in media installations. Like crop circles or sand mandalas, these works are highly soulful.
Ultimately, of course, Hinrichsen’s footprints disappear each spring, if not before. The earth is left without a trace -- the art remaining only in cerebral and recorded memory.
New drawings are planned for 2014 in Illinois, Colorado and at an art festival in the French Alps.
Photo: Simon Beck Simon Beck.
Simon Beck also creates giant geometric patterns in the snow. He also walks with purpose and perseverance. When his feet developed serious structural problems, he found snowshoeing to be one of the few forms of exercise he could bear. To it, he brought an artist’s eye and an orienteering map-maker’s discipline.
Photo: Courtesy of Szeretlekmagyarorszag. Simon Beck Snow Art
Simon Beck first started in 2004. Beautiful landscape scale snow drawings emerged. “It just seemed a natural thing to do,” explains Beck.
“What started as a simple, five-point star has emerged into complex designs. Mindfully moving in a direction that feels right can lead to journeys that are otherwise unimaginable.”
Photo: Artist Simon Beck stands in front of his snow art masterpiece.
For Beck, his snow drawing is a mindful practice. A single piece usually takes about 10 hours to make. But this can vary greatly depending on the pattern, his physical condition, and weather conditions.
Photo: Courtesy of Simon Beck. Giant Snowflake.
Beck’s and Hinrichsen's snow drawings are somewhat similar, both in concept and execution. They both recall indigenous cultures’ symbolism and design. They both embrace the beauty of transience and entropy, as do other iconic environmental artists, like Robert Smithson.
Photo: Geometric snow mandala snow art by Simon Beck.
“I hope to spread the message that the mountains and snow are beautiful and worth preserving.” Check out more of Simon Beck’s Beautiful Freeze environmental works on his Facebook Page.
Photo: Courtesy of Emacswiki. Icicles.
Read more about Ice Ice Baby all this week on BeautifulNow, including Our Travel Ice Bucket List, Beautifully Icy Chill Outs, Slow Ice Needs Quick Action, Beyond Incredible Icicles, and The Beauty of Glacial Ice and Frozen Footprints, Icy Impacts. And check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Wellness, Impact, Nature/Science, Food, Arts/Design, and Travel, Daily Fix posts.
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