Move over, snow angels! Simon Beck’s snow art wows

Some artists will go to great lengths to create their masterpieces.

Simon Beck will walk for hours and hours — and his art won't even survive spring.

The 55-year-old artist and orienteering map designer from Berkshire, England, spends up to 10 hours — a 40-kilometre walk — creating intricate mathematical patterns in the snow with snowshoes. He then photographs the massive works of art from either an aircraft, ski lift or mountain summit.

"There’s a frozen lake outside where I stay, and one day after skiing I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to make a pattern?" he told Discovery News of his initial inspiration. "I didn’t have any snow shoes, just walking boots, but the snow wasn’t too deep and it worked perfectly well.

He's been making snow art for five years now.

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"The biggest was about 10 soccer fields," he said. "It's a bit hard to measure, but a decent-sized project is about three soccer fields. That takes one day if conditions are good."

Beck usually creates his designs, which he first plans on graph paper, in France, where he lives during ski season.

When he gets to the snowy untracked site of a new project, he surveys the area to determine where the major points of his pre-planned design will be. He starts at one of those points, walks to the centre, then walks out and back from the other points. He then fills in the design of arcs, curves and lines with footprints.

He told the Daily Mail that he prefers to work in a uniform snow depth of about nine inches. Frozen lakes are ideal.

"Most of the time I travel round the Alps and hike up mountains, aiming to be on the summit at sunset for good photos. My feet are in a bad way but if I can keep my weight off the front of my feet things are not too bad," he told the Daily Mail.

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"Often I am copying designs I have found, like crop circles or well-known mathematical figures, or repeating designs I have made earlier but failed to get good photos of. Some designs I am commissioned to do require a lot of study as to the best way to create it, and this process can take several hours."

Beck's art lasts only until the next snowfall — but he doesn't mind.

"Quite honestly, once I have good photos I don’t care how long they stay around for," he said.

"I just try to get it right," he told Artwork Wednesdays last week. "I wanted to build up a collection of photos and create an outstanding contribution to the internet. Every so often, one finds something outstanding on the web and I wanted to make something really good."

Beck hopes to eventually publish a coffee-table book with his photos.

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