Snowmen as Installation Art

Snow-Creatures as Temporary Installation Art

By Arthur Freeman and Jordan Lewis

Location: Green Lake, University of Washington, Greek Row (UW).

Many Seattle residents have a love-hate relationship with snow in the city. While its presence generally gets many people excited, Seattle has been known to virtually shut down with small amount of snowfall -- causing disruption in people’s travel plans and daily routines. Jokingly, many UW students refer to this week’s snow-forecast as a potential “snow-pocalypse”.

This disruption of typical life in the city also leads to new uses of urban spaces as people take to the streets and sidewalks and parks with sleds, skis and snowshoes. We observed that streets are informally repurposed during snowstorms -- pedestrians reclaiming these public spaces which are typically reserved for vehicular travel for recreation purposes. We were interested in looking specifically at snowmen and ‘snow-creatures’ as a temporary art installations in the city that have the ability to foster community interaction. What are the types of snow-creatures being made, where do they occur most frequently, and do the types of artistic (or non-artistic) expression vary in different locales? The photos show some of the artistic expressions we found around campus and Greenlake. Snow was used Temporary art -- using materials on hand. Sticks, rocks, and sometimes edible items were placed to make an artistic statement.









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