0 Simon Beck's SNOWSHOE Art

British Artist Simon Beck creates snow art by walking back-and-forth for miles in snowshoes, creating in the process some of the most astonishing large-scale designs in the snow, like a 300-foot-high image of a wolf howling at the moon.

Simon Beck’s snow art at Lake Louise, Alberta. Credit: Chris Moseley/Lake Louise Ski Resort

It all started ten years ago when he purchased an apartment at a ski resort and as he explained in an interview with radio personality and host of Public Radio International’s The World, Marco Werman:



“… quite soon after I moved in, I just made a drawing on the lake outside of the building where I lived, a frozen lake covered in snow, and it just seemed like a bit of fun to do after skiing one day. I just felt like I needed some exercise, I wanted to do something that’s not too strenuous and I decided to make a pattern in the snow. I had no idea how good it was going to look when I first made it; I was quite amazed when I saw it from the ski lift the following day. That’s how it started.”

Beck had no idea how good it looked until he saw it from a ski lift.

Simon Beck


He called it an ” orienteering exercise” and explained the process in 3 stages:

“If you imagine orienteering, you’ve got a map of a piece of woodland and you follow where you’re on a map to find some control points, which are hidden by the course setter. This is the same process–you’ve got a map and you just use your orienteering skills to walk around the main lines in the map to mark out the key points in the map, and then the second stage is a join the dots exercise to join these measure points together with lines that may be straight or carefully judged curves. Then the third stage starts, which is just shading in the shaded areas by walking backwards and forwards with your snowshoes until the job is complete.”


Beck created a wolf howling at the moon at the Lake Louise Ski Resort in Banff, Alberta, last month.


Simon Beck plots his course to begin his snow art project. Credit: Lake Louise Ski Resort

Simon Beck making the outline of his howling wolf image. Credit: Lake Louise Ski Resort



An image can sometimes take up to an astonishing 11 hours to create which also means Beck can walk up to 30 miles just to complete a single piece. Now that's a workout!

Simon Beck snowshoeing in circles to create image of a wolf howling at the moon. Credit: Lake Louise Ski Resort


But seeing that it is art which relies on mother nature, the artist’s work only lasts as long as the conditions hold – which Beck doesn’t mind as long as he was able to capture a few good photos first.

The finished work. Credit: Lake Louise Ski Resort


Video





Via

No comments:

Post a Comment