Chilling Out

Who needs snow angels when you can find mesmerizing snowscapes the size of ten soccer fields in the French Alps. Using snow as an art canvas, Simon Beck walks on snowshoes for miles, sometimes for 10 hours at a time, to create huge patterns in the snow. The British former mapmaker blends art and landscape with these elaborate designs while living in France during the ski season. The 55-year old from Berkshire finds spaces in between lodges and mountains at ski resorts and favors a level, untracked site with a snow depth of about 9 inches of powdery snow to make sure his art looks best in photographs which he takes from either an airplane, summit or a ski lift.

Using an expedition compass to create his slope of styling art, Beck initially plans out the pattern on graph paper, then surveys the site and judges where the major points of the design should be, and starts at one of those points. From the center he calculates the distance to the other points  and walks out back and forth from the center to the other points. Each piece is composed of a series of lines, geometric shapes, or arc and curves which he shades in to fill the pattern. He often copies designs he has found, like crop circles, and his mathematical patterns have varying effects when viewed from different angles, and as the day progresses his paintings take on new aspects. Although these intricate pieces created by Beck’s feet are gone by the next snowfall, his awe-inspiring photographs could end up on your coffee table, as he’s getting increasingly more famous these days and is working towards a goal of producing a book that he hopes will bring in a cool million or so. That could fund a lot more walking…  Simon Beck Snow Art