Large Scale Snow Drawings by Sonja Hinrichsen

Using snowshoes artist Sonja Hinrichsen, with the help of 5 volunteers, created these snow drawings at Rabbit’s Ear Pass, a lofty mountain pass in the Rocky Mountains. Sonja Hinrichsen had previously created snow drawings at upstate New York, Colorado and Hayden in the past few years.

Hinrichsen, 44, hails from south-west Germany. She landed in California in 1999 for graduate school at the San Francisco Art Institute. Snow drawings first crept into Hinrichsen’s inspiration in 2009 while working at the Anderson Ranch near Aspen. She was inspired by animal tracks left in otherwise unmarked and massive canvasses of snow laid out before her in high mountain meadows.

She created her first spirals on Lake Tahoe. Over time, she started pre-empting her drawings with sketches on paper. But concepts often changed because her effort is a direct response to the environment, and snow behaves differently depending upon its depth, moisture and texture.

“Snow drawings last such a short time. It could be two to three hours, or two to three days,” she says. “They define the landscape and they are defined by it.”

See more pictures on Flickr. If you liked this, you will also love Jim Denevan’s large sand drawings and drawings over frozen ice.