source: highlike
Work: Snow Drawings is an ongoing project where I “draw” large design systems in the environment by walking lines into fresh snow surfaces with snowshoes. Ideal “canvases” are deforested areas and frozen lakes. The finished pieces are ephemeral. While they take hours to create, their duration is entirely unpredictable. Sometimes they are coated over by new snow shortly after completion. This project began during an artist residency in the Colorado Rocky Mountains in winter 2009. At first entirely out of play, I started designing patterns in my mind, which I then tried to “transfer” onto the snow by walking lines in untouched snow surfaces. As vast fields of snow became huge “canvases”, I became the “pen”. My designs have since become much more elaborate and refined, and I have continued this project in other landscapes across the USA. During the past winters this work has evolved into large social practice art events. Working with community has enabled me to create monumental pieces while at the same time engaging people in fun outdoor winter activity in stunning landscapes. I have so far conducted three major community art pieces; in 2012 at Rabbit Ears Pass in the Western Colorado Mountains and in early 2013 on frozen Lake Catamount near Steamboat Springs; in collaboration with the Steamboat Springs Arts Council, the Nature Conservancy of Colorado, the Steamboat Springs Public Library and the Legacy Education Fund (Colorado). In early 2014 I covered a small lake in New York’s Hudson Valley hosted by the Columbia Nature Conservancy, and I was invited to work in the French Alps, sponsored by the Serre Chevalier Skiing Organization. In each of these events I created monumental size drawings with community participation. They could only be seen from the air in their entirety – and only for a few days. The creative process itself constitutes a significant part of this work. It is important to me that participants experience the elements of nature while they help me transform their own familiar snow landscape into a piece of art. I hope that the aerial photographs that I take right after completion of each piece can demonstrate also to a larger audience how the landscape is transformed into a piece of art through a system of designs. This changes our perception of the landscape and accentuates the beauty and magic of the natural environment, and thus inspires awe and appreciation for art as well as for nature. I deem this important – especially as modern society becomes increasingly alienated from the natural world. I believe that for a successful future of our race we will need to reconnect with our planet’s nature, understand it better and take better stewardship thereof. As an environmentalist it is important to me that my interventions in nature are subtle and leave no lasting traces. I am not interested in creating lasting artworks, as I believe that our world is over-saturated with man-made products. I like to unfold my work into large immersive experiences, however I prefer that it live on in its documentation only, and – hopefully – in the memories of my audiences as well as those who participate in the creative effort. Snow Drawings has been featured extensively online, and written about in magazines, including SOMA Magazine (US), TRACCE Archeology Magazine (Italy), a Chinese Art Magazine and a 2014 Environmental Arts Calendar (Amber Lotus Press, USA), and used for a book-cover for a novel (Norway). One of the Steamboat Springs projects was featured on NPR, MSNBC, The Discovery Channel (US and Canada), and public TV Tokyo. Photographic prints and video have been shown in exhibitions in California, Colorado and in Europe. Snow Drawings has also been included in 2 different educational books for Elementary School children (France and Germany), as well as in a periodical for teens (France). A piece from the Snow Drawings 2013 series (Lake Catamount, CO) was awarded First Prize by the Piedmont Art Center in Piedmont, California.
Photographer: Sonja Hinrichsen
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source: Fastcodesigncom
By Tim Maly “Most of my artwork addresses the environment in some way,” says Hinrichsen. What’s interesting here is how that approach plays out in the creation process. By working in the environment, Hinrichsen subjects herself to the environment. Using a substance as ephemeral as snow poses several challenges. For one thing, the work is very temporary–winds and snowfall can erase it within hours or days. “This requires instant photo documentation,” says Hinrichsen. For another, there is the problem of getting pristine snow to work with in the first place. Originally, this project was going to occur on land owned by the Nature Conservancy. “Unfortunately this winter has been exceptionally dry and there was not anywhere enough snow to create snow drawings on the Nature Conservancy land,” says Hinrichsen. They had to move the project to the one place there was snow, Rabbit Ears Pass. The actual stamping was done by Hinrichsen alongside a team volunteers, recruited from the community. A fair bit of improvisation on the part of participants was involved. Hinrichsen set the basic parameters: spirals that are created from the inside out and lead from one to the next. “I wanted to assure that the resulting work would become one cohesive piece rather than a collection of small individual drawing attempts.” Two weeks later, Hinrichsen returned with an even larger group from the community. You can see the result here: [IMAGE] Hinrichsen largely works with large scale video installations, using the medium to explore the places and how humans have used and thought about those places throughout history. Interventions like the Snow Drawings are something she’s begun to explore only in the past few years, but she says she enjoys creating these ephemeral works. “I’m generally not interested in creating lasting art pieces, as I believe that our world is over-saturated with man-made products,” she says, “I like to unfold my work into large experiences, however I prefer work that lives on in its documentation only, and–hopefully–in the memories of my audiences.”
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source: thenewwolfcouk
The New Wolf by Sarah Coey Sonja Hinrichsen examines urban and natural environments through exploration and research. She is interested in the intersection between place and human perception thereof, throughout history. Her work manifests in immersive video installations and interventions in nature. As an artist she feels the responsibility to address subject matters society tends to neglect, including adverse impacts to the natural environment. While she wants to provoke thought and engage her audience intellectually, she is not interested in creating lasting art pieces, as she believes that our world is over-saturated with man-made products. She likes to unfold her work into large immersive experiences, however she prefers that her work lives on in its documentation only – and in her audiences’ memories. Sonja graduated from the Academy of Art and Design in Stuttgart, Germany and received an MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2001. She is based in San Francisco, however within the past few years she has been travelling extensively to explore her topics of art and research. Snow Drawings is an ongoing project where I “draw” huge designs in the environment by walking with snowshoes. Ideal “canvases” for these “drawings” are fields, meadows and pastures, as well as frozen lakes and rivers. Depending on size and density of the pieces the creation process can take anywhere between 20 minutes and several hours. I began this project in winter 2009 during an artist residency in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Out of play I designed patterns in my mind, which I then transferred onto the snow. My designs have since become more elaborate and refined, and often series of similar designs play together in large works. I have continued this project in other landscapes, such as in Northern New Mexico, in the Sierra Nevada near Lake Tahoe, on a frozen lake in the Hudson Valley north of New York City, and on a frozen river in Northwestern Colorado. In January 2012 I worked with volunteers from Steamboat Springs and Hayden, Colorado to create pieces covering vast areas at Rabbit Ears Pass. During their short presence the pieces are embedded in the landscape. The scenery and the drawings play together and inform each other. It is my intention to perform this work in as many different environments as possible. Due to its ephemeral nature the duration of each piece is entirely unpredictable. It can last as long as a few days or as short as a couple of hours, being covered by new snowfall or snowdrift immediately. This requires instant photo documentation. The photos are shot in portions to be merged together into large panoramas later. This allows me to achieve a wider angle and a higher resolution image. I have recently also taken aerial photos. The work ultimately manifests itself in large-scale prints, printed digitally on high-grade photographic paper.
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source: somamagazine
SOMA Magazine by Emilie Trice German artist Sonja Hinrichsen’s epic environmental installations manifest more than the natural beauty of her chosen canvas. They are exercises in meditation, philosophically tied to the native tribes of America’s vast landscape, their symbols, rituals and mythologies. Best known for her series of “Snow Drawings,” Hinrichsen creates ephemeral compositions that eschew the trappings of contemporary art’s obsession with materialism. Her documentation of these pieces, which include photos and videos, are the only objects that substantiate her practice beyond each piece’s finite lifecycle. As with Andy Goldsworthy, her installations will eventually recede into the landscape, indistinguishable from their origins. Hinrichsen first came to America as a 19-year-old high school graduate, traveling cross-country by Greyhound bus from the East to the West coast and back again. Her impressions of America focused on the expansive openness of the landscape, in contrast to the dense population of her native Europe. “I was taken by the environment here from the beginning and that still informs my work,” she says. Hinrichsen later returned to America for graduate school and settled in the Bay Area in 2005. However, Hinrichsen would best be described as nomadic, constantly moving from residency to residency, developing works on site that respond directly to her adopted surroundings. The “Snow Drawings” that Hinrichsen created at Rabbit Ears Pass near Steamboat Springs, CO were executed with the assistance of a group of volunteers on snowshoes. The repetition of a simple pattern, performed communally, connects this work to the ritualized practices of Native American tribes, whose culture and spirituality Hinrichsen cites as a central influence to her work. Many of Hinrichsen’s artworks incorporate Native American symbolism, especially the spiral, a form that has universal significance, but is commonly found in Native American tribal art. The Hopi’s use of the spiral represents journeys made to the far reaches of the earth and beyond, into the ‘Otherworld.’ When viewing Hinrichsen’s “Snow Drawings,” their incredibly poetic simplicity seems to radiate a kind of mysticism, a sublime path drawn across nature’s quiet canvas. In another work, “Sun/Moon Symbol,” Hinrichsen created forms out of rocks that she coated in a phosphorescent powder. The rocks absorbed sunlight during the day and reflected that energy in the night, becoming glowing references to the celestial worship of archaic tribes. Still, Hinrichsen’s work extends beyond environmental interventions; the artist also confronts urban settings and their sociological narratives. She interviews residents, mapping their histories with ethnographic detail and intertwines her research with imagery sourced from both past and present. The resulting installations often combine large-scale video projections with audio and sculptural elements, creating multi-media environments that seek to translate the hidden identities of collective spaces. In one such project, entitled “Bridging” (2005), Hinrichsen spent four months recording images of pedestrians crossing the Mária Valéria Bridge, which connects Hungary and Slovakia across the Danube River. The bridge dates back to 1895, but was destroyed during World War II and only fullyrestored in 2001, when the Danube was established as the new geographic border between the two countries, despite the two towns on either side of the bridge both being Hungarian before the war. Due to the political situation, communication between citizens on either side of the bridge was repressed, creating isolation where there had once been community. Hinrichsen interviewed residents of both towns, archiving their memories of the years before the war, during the separation and following the restoration of the bridge, which were projected as text among slides of the bridge as it stands today, a functioning conduit between formerly divided people, who share a common past. All of Hinrichsen’s works, whether land art or urban studies, employ community outreach and education. Her artistic practice is exceptionally non-commercial—a romantic, even altruistic ideal of what an artist should be—that in today’s commodity-driven and profit-obsessed times few artists actually are. Hinrichsen creates work that is both informative and mystifying, methodical and magical. She writes that, “I am not interested in creating lasting art pieces, as I believe that our world is over-saturated with man-made products.” She would rather “inspire appreciation and awe for our natural world.” Like the Native American tribes whose customs fascinate her, Hinrichsen orchestrates a symbolic relationship between the beauty of nature and the evolution of humanity. Her art speaks of the transience that defines our everyday lives, but rejoices in the wonders of the universe that transcend our earthly existence.
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source: steamboatmagazine
Steamboat Magazine by Jennie Lay Patterns on the Land Sonja Hinrichsen is a force on nature. The environmental artist displayed her prowess during a visit to Hayden’s Carpenter Ranch last winter. Echoing the stealth of a mountain lion, Hinrichsen left spiraling trails of snowshoe tracks in deep snow along the Yampa River. Her birdfooted patterns crisscrossed meadows and transformed the land- scape. Jets ascended and descended at the nearby airport while crystalline weavings emerged among the willows. And on the ground, her intricate and impermanent snow drawings melded into the landscape as if Mother Nature had always intend- ed them just so. In late January, on the brink of Steamboat’s 99th Winter Carnival, Hinrichsen returns to Steamboat Springs to orchestrate a new snow drawing on the Carpenter Ranch – this time with members of the local community. Hinrichsen will create design parameters that let everyone work in unison for two days on one large cohesive snow drawing that will be photographed and filmed. Hay meadows will be re-imagined as a huge canvas. Volunteers will “be like a pen dancing across the stage, leaving a trace as it goes,” Hinrichsen says. “Sonja is very light hearted,” says ranch manager Betsy Blakeslee. “It’s an intense art form. She’s very organized. She’s really good at envisioning and using her imagination on the onset. It will be so fun to see her work with a group of people.” Hinrichsen, 43, hails from south-west Germany. She landed in California in 1999 for graduate school at the San Francisco Art Institute. The American West enchanted her and the Bay Area became home base. “All my work has become about the American landscape. I just didn’t fit in Germany any more,” she says, noting that as she travels, she aims to map the history and culture of the landscape through her art. She has spent a decade grappling with the idea of manifest destiny, that oddly American urge that propelled pioneers to spread across the West by wagon and train, slaughtering native peoples and their cultures, along with the mighty bison, as they settled along the way. “There was so much courage in that, and so much cruelty,” she observes. Hinrichsen’s work is ruled by a single thought: “I am nomadic,” she says. Colorado Art Ranch appealed to her for just that reason. The roaming nonprofit arts organization travels among Colorado towns to facilitate one-month residencies for visual and literary artists from around the world. Each residency includes a public forum, called the Artposia, to promote conversations about how art and science intersect with land and social issues. Since 2008, Colorado Art Ranch has settled into a regular September encampment at The Nature Conservancy’s Carpenter Ranch. The working cattle ranch has housed a range of writers, film makers, painters, sculptors and landscape-scale conceptual artists. Artist Matt Moore chipped away at a plan for one of his large-scale land forms. Carrie Marill painted fleeting bird portraits with stark white backgrounds. Filmmaker Burcu Koray came from Istanbul to write a script about a female rodeo star. Sculptor Amy Laugesen created 30 horses that look as if they were excavated from among China’s Terracotta Army, but are actually steeds inspired by the American Quarterhorse with its roots in Hayden. “We’ve attracted a certain kind of artist who is interested in the land,” says Colorado Art Ranch executive director Grant Pound. “This particular residency (at the Carpenter Ranch) seems to be leaning toward artists who are working with the local landforms themselves – and the land issues. It makes sense for where it is. I think we’re going to push that even farther in the future – requesting proposals for artists who want to do things in and around that conserved land.” Hinrichsen first arrived here in September 2010. During her residency she mapped the property, hiked, took notes and photos and read about local history. She explored archives for Ferris Carpenter’s stories and anecdotes about the indigenous Utes. Her resulting video installation layered images of the Yampa River, hay meadows and flying geese with emotional, historical and scientific text that was projected on Hayden’s historic grain elevator at Yampa Valley Feeds. “It was a reflection on the history of the area, especially the Utes, mixed with my own impressions of the area,” she says. During that fall residency, Hinrichsen was smitten by the Yampa Valley curse. She returned soon after the snow arrived to work in the crystalline landscape. She spent 10 icy days making enormous snow drawings up and down the river and along the low-lying meadows. Using snowshoes and her imagination, she aimed to evoke a natural flow and the meandering of the water. “It just felt right to work along the river,” Hinrichsen says. Her drawings were exhausting creative and physical efforts. Working alone, she walked her patterns for seven to eight hours a day. Overnight, a winter storm would roll through and all would disappear. “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.” Snow drawings first crept into Hinrichsen’s inspiration in 2009 while working at the Anderson Ranch near Aspen. Lake Tahoe then saw some of her winter spirals, as did a frozen lake in upstate New York. An installation got skunked by dry weather in northern New Mexico last spring, right about the time Steamboat was crossing our 400-inch mark for the season’s snowfall. It came out of play, she says. Over time, she started pre-empting her drawings with ketches 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. Call it the unpredictable “crust vs. fluff” factor. Watching Hinrichsen’s process was awe-inspiring, meditative, peaceful and whimsical, says Blakeslee: “She was so focused….It stretched your imagination once you got to see the designs and how they fit into the landscape. It took you to a different place. The perspective of the design became part of nature, even though it was man made. It was in the animal tracks, the mosaic of the forest and the shape of the fields. It became a giant canvas… seeing things from a new perspective.”
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source: bostoncom
Boston Globe Rethinking snow By Courtney Humphries March 13, 2011 Snow design German-born artist Sonja Hinrichsen was hiking in Colorado in 2009 when she was inspired to start making designs in open fields. Donning a pair of snowshoes, she created a series of large looping whirls and spirals, each drawn with a single unbroken line. In the winters that have followed, she’s worked in northern New Mexico and the Lake Tahoe area, and this year, she created designs on a frozen lake in the Ooms Conservation Area in Chatham, N.Y., and at a site in northwestern Colorado. The work takes advantage of the blank, sprawling quality of snowfields and follows the contours of the landscape. Viewed from ground level, the repetitive curved lines are a lesson in perspective, creating visual texture across otherwise blank stretches. Viewed from above, the designs look as if a giant had been doodling in the landscape, decorating the white spaces and margins around forests and buildings. Some pieces persist for days and others are quickly covered with new snowfall, but Hinrichsen embraces the unpredictability. “They’re very ephemeral, but I like that about them,” she says.
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source: registerstar
Register Star by Kate Kocijanski CHATHAM — Ooms Pond was once again transformed into a winter work of art when it became the site of snowshoe drawings by international artist Sonja Hinrichsen. The Millay Colony for the Arts welcomed the community to help create the snowshoe art on the pond. Hinrichsen’s goal is to cover the entire pond by this afternoon. This the second time the event has come to Chatham. The artist did a similar project back in 2010 on the 18-acre pond. “She really enjoyed the area when she visited and loved the sense of community here,” said Millay’s Residency Director Calliope Nicholas. Hinrichsen is a 2009 alum of the colony. The residency director called the snowshoe designs a form of environmental installation art, something Hinrichsen is well known for. The artist has done her snowshoe art all over the country. Her last project was in Steamboat Springs, Colo. Nicholas was on hand to greet guests as they arrived and to instruct them on what to do once they got on the ice. Volunteers were told to walk in a straight line on the pond and start with making a smaller circle. As they moved outward the circles increased in size, which created a concentric circle design. “It’s a huge canvas that we want to cover with these spiral kind of shapes,” said Hinrichsen Saturday night. “We had 25 volunteers come out at different times today.” Old Chatham resident Elisabeth Grace broke out her snowshoes after many years to create her own art on the ice. She thought the event sounded like a lot of fun. For her it was a great way to get out of the house. By 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Nicholas said 10 people showed up with their snowshoes in hand. The event had started on Friday morning and brought in six volunteers throughout the day. She is expecting more on today. The Columbia Land Conservancy worked with the colony to put on the event and a limited amount of snowshoes were provided by CLC to volunteers. Upon seeing the concentric circles on the ice, many participants marveled at their beauty. Hinrichsen had been out on the ice for all of the afternoon on both days. “It’s gorgeous. Ooms Pond is a fantastic area and very tranquil. The circles blend into the snowy landscape,” said Jonathan Anders of Niverville. Another first-time visitor to the site was Janice Lowe of Brooklyn. Lowe is currently staying at the Millay Colony while she teaches a poetry workshop at the Germantown Central School District. The colony coordinated her visit through the Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Hinrichsen’s official website gives an inside look into her artistic creations and background. She graduated from the Academy of Art in Stuttgart, Germany and obtained her master’s degree in new genres from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2001. According to her website, as an artist she examines “urban and natural environments through exploration and research. Her work manifests in immersive video installations and interventions in nature.”
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source: rawlinstimes
Rawlins Times by Nicole Ballard RAWLINS, Wyoming — Sonja Hinrichsen is internationally known for her snow drawings — intricate patterns etched into a snowfield with snowshoes. Hinrichsen organized a communal art project Feb. 16 and 17. The unpredictability of the weather in Wyoming has made her project difficult, but for Hinrichsen and local participants it has opened up a new point of view. “I’m seeing it as a positive thing,” Hinrichsen said. Now she can focus on smaller, and more intricate patterns she can make by herself. “It’s really more about how the work is embedded in the landscape than about how big it becomes or how much area I cover.” Hinrichsen is an alumna of the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts residency program and a current resident artist. She began the project in Colorado in 2009 when snowshoeing for the first time. About 10 people helped with the snow drawing that weekend. Clarke Turner was one of the participants who drove in from Casper for the two-day project. Turner had to leave early in the afternoon to get back to Casper, but said the experience made him look at the landscape differently. “I have always have enjoyed cross-country skiing and snowshoeing to experience Wyoming’s wonderful outdoors, yet I have never had the same perspective that Sonja gave us that weekend,” Turner wrote. “She looked at the landscape as her canvas, and as a result I saw the land in a different light.” Sally Patton agrees with Turner’s new perspective. Patton has been trying new ways to stay fit, she said. When she attended the Brush Creek Presents, where resident artists showed their skills and discussed art projects, Patton knew she had to join in Hinrichsen’s communal snow drawing. “It was one of my more fabulous experiences,” Patton said excitedly. When Patton arrived at Brush Creek Ranch Feb. 16 to join the art project, her first impression of Hinrichsen’s plan for the snow drawing was, “This looks so mathematical.” The drawing representing the art they were supposed to make by trekking through the snow in snowshoes was a complex diagram of circle designs. Hinrichsen assured those who attended that it was easier than it looked, Patton said. After hours of snowshoeing, and an episode with the ranch dogs ruining the fresh canvas of snow, Patton said her pedometer informed her she had covered 2.62 miles on the first day of the project. As she sat back and looked at the design she had created after hours of strenuous work, Patton says she realized how the artwork changed with the time of day and how it blended into the landscape. Patton returned Sunday to continue the project, but yet another storm was on the horizon. After working from morning to noon, the wind whipped and whisked the snow drawing away. The art she had created lasted only for a day. Still, Patton said the experience was worth it: “I will never look at a field of snow the same way again.”
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source: oaklandartenthusiast
Art Enthusiast: Kala Art Institute: Keeping Time OCTOBER 15, 2012 “Keeping Time” is the second in Kala Art Institute gallery’s two-part 2012 exhibition series that explores cycles of time and various modes of marking, tracking, measuring and keeping of time with drawings, photographs, textiles, sculptures and videos. Several conceptual themes and processes are shared by a number of the artists from the Bay Area, as well as artists selected through their nationwide submission review process including repetitive, almost ritual actions and habits of the body; physical representations of the time-based duration of art-making; and recordings that document everything from the domestically mundane to dramatic movement of evolution and nature. German-born artist Sonja Hinrichsen’s photographs documenting her snow-tracking designs have been highly praised and featured extensively from major news publications and contemporary arts blogs. The photographs are just the finished products of the abstracted organic, almost religious labyrinthine patterns she creates over time that involves a laborious process of mapping and an almost ritual traverse of the snowy landscape. She enjoys the ephemeral quality of her creations, both over a duration of time they are created and over a duration of time they are erased by the next snowfall. [Excerpt]
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source: steamboattoday
Steamboat Pilot & Today This year’s snow drawing project a tribute to Lake Catamount’s creation By Ben Ingersoll Monday, January 27, 2014 Steamboat Springs — Snow drawing — it starts with a vision and a dash of inspiration, and then it becomes a collaborative and creative piece of art. Ask artist Sonja Hinrichsen, she’s been doing it for years in Routt County, and as her work keeps returning to the Steamboat area, it also is making its impact in far wider reaches. Since 2011, Hinrichsen has been hosting snow drawings in Routt County, starting with Hayden in 2011, then moving on to a project at Rabbit Ears Pass in 2012. Last winter, she and more than 60 volunteers traversed a deep blanket of snow on frozen-over Lake Catamount. It was a piece of art to behold with a series of spiraling circles and connecting lines. Hinrichsen returned to Lake Catamount over the weekend, but this year’s project wasn’t like her previous pieces seen locally. On Saturday, Hinrichsen and community volunteers broke into four groups along the western edge of the lake, each cluster representing the original tributaries along the Yampa River that created the body of water. “The idea is to represent these different tributaries within that whole piece,” Hinrichsen said Friday. “I think this is more to sort of draw it all together.” But it wasn’t meant to be a uniform, linear march, she said. In tying the project together with her environmental motive, Hinrichsen expected the community volunteers to think how tributaries work and how water moves. Rivers, creeks and streams rarely flow in a direct manner, like a canal might. Water moves in whirlpools and slices around rocks. It spills into gullies and makes ripples, she said. “There is no specific design except for the idea that we (wanted to) represent the old river — an abstraction of it,” Hinrichsen said. The volunteers each held colored wind bags — elongated bags that can catch flowing air — so to make aerial photographs a possibility. The four tributaries were marked red, yellow, green and blue. Then the volunteers, wearing snowshoes, walked northbound along where the original Yampa River flowed before Catamount existed. From above, the mixture of red, yellow, green and blue was to represent a temporary live image of what used to be. As a naturalist, one of Hinrichsen’s goals is to create natural art that won’t leave a permanent footprint, except in photographs. “It’s not lasting but it kind of is lasting, because I photograph it, and it gets printed and shown in galleries and the news,” Hinrichsen said, noting past projects have made rounds in education books in France and Germany. This year’s project was sponsored by the Legacy Education Fund, a place-based educational program in Routt County. Projects like snow drawings are examples of place-based education, which pulls folks from the classroom into the outdoors for a different style of learning. “I hope to get people more attached and attuned with the natural world this way,” Hinrichsen said. She’s proud that lasting images can make her work and projects internationally recognized, but working with volunteers in a community setting holds a special meaning. “I really loved the past two events I did in 2013 here and 2012 at Rabbit Ears Pass, just because they were community events and people were getting involved,” Hinrichsen said. “I realized that people actually like this and are really proud of creating these arts projects.”