<\/p>\n
SILVERTHORNE \u2013 Simon Beck carefully plots his course before shuffling through a windswept snowfield high in the Rocky Mountains.<\/p>\n
Using a compass, snowshoes and his background as a cartographer and competitive orienteer, the 61-year-old British artist and a handful of volunteers recently tromped across a frozen reservoir near the ski resort town of Silverthorne, west of Denver, to create a massive, geometrical design on a fresh canvas of snow.<\/p>\n
The result after more than a dozen hours of labor in freezing weather and under an unrelenting sun was a spectacular spiral pattern the length of about two soccer fields.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope it makes people more aware of the snow and the environment and the beauty of it and how we need snow,\u201d Beck said after completing the drawing. \u201cAnd I think it\u2019s a really beautiful and unique art form.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beck finished his day with high fives from his volunteers and congratulations from people who gathered on a nearby hillside to watch his progress.<\/p>\n
But it hasn\u2019t always gone this smoothly. It\u2019s never clear how many workers will show up. And if bad weather rolls in, an intricate piece of art can quickly disappear.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very frustrating when you plod around for hours and hours and hours and then the wind blows it away before you\u2019ve finished it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Beck started making fractal drawings in snow in 2004 outside his winter home at France\u2019s Les Arcs ski resort when he trampled out a five-pointed star spanning more than 300 feet \u201cjust for a bit of fun.\u201d He didn\u2019t realize how good it looked until he rode a ski lift the next day and saw it from above.<\/p>\n
\u201cSnow drawing, which to me seems like a fairly obvious idea, was not something anyone else had ever done as far as I could tell, and I was really surprised by that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Beck has completed about 330 snow drawings and 120 in sand, and has set a goal of 1,000 total drawings by the time he\u2019s 80. His drawings are commissioned around the world, he has published a book, and he has attracted a dedicated fan base.<\/p>\n
Carolyn Tiller, who has been following Beck\u2019s career for three or four years, watched his progress on the reservoir and delivered him and his crew cookies and spiked cocoa.<\/p>\n
The 62-year-old retired gemologist said Beck\u2019s art reminds her of her childhood playing with a Spirograph, the classic toy that makes it easy to create detailed geometric drawings.<\/p>\n
\u201cI also really appreciate someone who can make something by one step after another step after another step,\u201d said Tiller, who lives across the street from the reservoir. \u201cThey say the greatest journeys start with one step, and that\u2019s a perfect example.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
working near Silverthorne reflects beauty and fragility of environment<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-74548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74548"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=74548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}