Snow Art

Snow blower
tool for clearing paths
maker of a mazes for pleasure of kids
paintbrush on white canvas







A few days ago I reported finding no snowmen, no carrot noses or cabbage ears. So I set out to correct the oversight with the rolling of a big snowball on which my plan called for two more. But no matter how hard I tried to compact the loose snow, I couldn’t even get it a foot in diameter before it crumbled. Could it be, I thought, that in the Icebox of the Nation snow is too cold for snowballs? Is warmer snow required for compaction? I gave up and kept walking. I don’t know how the artist did it, but having tried and failed I appreciate the result.





A truck driver with logs this long, approaching a turn this tight, is like an artist with brush in hand, approaching a canvass with confident sense of form.







A small isolated town is not a place for animosity, hatred and bad manners. You see your townsfolk nearly every day and deal with them whether they are nice or not. So you learn how to get along. This too is art—bending your lines of personality to enhance the town canvass. The water tower represents cooperation, necessity of nourishing the whole, and the importance of community. Big cities don’t paint this way.








You don’t put a sign like this on a road entering Pasadena. You get laughed at if you do, and jokes are flung. Here too it brings some quips, but everyone understands it, and they think it better to have the sign than not to have it. This too is community art.