10 Ice and Snow Art Projects: Sculptures, Snow Drawings and a Playable Record

Ice and snow give artists something unusual: a material whose transformation can become part of the work. Melting, fresh snowfall and changing light alter what a visitor sees.

Two approaches to temporary art

Nele Azevedo’s small seated ice figures make disappearance visible at the scale of a human form. Sonja Hinrichsen’s snow drawings use repeated tracks across a much larger surface. Their contrasting methods show how temporary art can work at very different scales.

Artists, techniques and the changing material

Each artist’s project has its own identity, scale and method. Names and titles help distinguish the works and connect each technique with its artist. Ask whether the work is carved, cast, walked into the snow or assembled from ice, and how the setting contributes to its eventual change.

Explore more: Azevedo’s Birmingham installation; large-scale drawings in snow.

Related reading: Michael Grab’s Balanced Stones: Looking Closely at Gravity.

Related reading: Nicole Dextras’ IceShifts: Clothing Held in Ice.

Related reading: Jim Denevan’s Lake Baikal Snow Drawing, 2010.

Related reading: Tim Linhart’s Ice Instruments and a Swedish Winter Concert.

Videos: Shout Out Louds - Blue Ice The Ice Record Project (published by tedmalmros); Art Hard (Trailer) (published by TheAnthropologist1).

Ten different ways to work with winter

Ice and snow are more than substitutes for stone or paper. They can melt, reflect coloured light, record footsteps and produce sound as they change. These ten projects use those properties in quite different ways, from small seated figures to enormous drawings across a landscape.

Some projects combine frozen material with fabricated structures, coloured water or mechanical equipment. That variety changes both their appearance and the work required to make them. A field of footprints depends on scale and viewpoint, while a small melting figure can be watched at close range. The ten projects offer several answers to the same question: what can an artist do with a material that will disappear?

1. Nele Azevedo: Minimum Monument

Azevedo’s small seated ice figures turn the usual idea of a permanent public monument into something temporary. In the Berlin installation described in the original account, about a thousand figures were placed on steps and allowed to melt.

That particular presentation was associated with climate awareness. The wider project should not be reduced to one event’s message: its anonymous human forms and short lifetime also invite viewers to think about who is represented by monuments, and what it means for a public artwork to disappear.

2. Rhea Thierstein: an ice-ship fashion set

Thierstein’s ship was created for a Vogue US production. It belongs to the world of art direction and constructed imagery, where the finished photograph can matter as much as the object standing before the camera.

The account of the production identifies some components as artificial. The interest lies in how the set creates the appearance of a frozen vessel, rather than a claim that every part was carved from one block of ice.

3. Shout Out Louds: the Blue Ice record

The Swedish band’s Blue Ice project turned the idea of a record release into a temporary physical object: a playable disc made from frozen water. A limited group of recipients received the means to experience the unusual format.

Its appeal comes from the tension between a recorded song, which can be replayed, and a material that will not remain stable at room temperature. The demonstration video belongs with the story. This was an experimental release, not a durable replacement for a conventional record or advice to put melting ice on ordinary audio equipment.

4. Jim Denevan: drawing on Lake Baikal

Denevan’s large-scale work used the frozen surface of Lake Baikal as a setting for geometric marks. The original article described a project covering roughly nine square miles and a team working in demanding winter conditions.

The scale makes the choice of viewpoint especially important. From ground level the marks become lines and distances; from above, their relationship resolves into a much larger composition.

5. Daniel Gray: the rainbow igloo

The rainbow igloo used coloured ice blocks to transform a familiar winter form. The original account attributed the Canadian project to Daniel Gray and reported almost five hundred blocks and roughly 150 hours of work. Those figures describe this project, rather than a universal building recipe.

Colour is the central visual idea. Each block remains distinct, while the curved arrangement creates a single enclosure. The photographs show why light matters as much as the outline: translucent material gives the walls an appearance that opaque coloured bricks could not reproduce.

6. Toshihiko Shibuya: Snow Palette

Shibuya’s installation places coloured surfaces above snow so that reflected light changes the appearance of the white ground beneath. The effect can resemble a glow, but it should not be confused with an electrical lamp hidden in each disc.

The relationship between the raised forms and the snow is essential. As the snow accumulates or changes shape, the distance and visible area beneath the objects also change. The work uses winter conditions as part of its appearance rather than treating snow as a neutral display plinth.

7. Keith Moskow and Robert Linn: Ice Chimes

Ice Chimes combines a tall constructed framework with the processes of collecting snow, melting it and forming icicles. In the original description, heated coils help water move through the structure before it freezes and eventually falls into a metal collection area.

Sound emerges from that sequence, making the sculpture more than a static visual object. Weather and time influence what happens. Its mechanical components are part of the artwork’s operation, so it belongs in a different category from a figure carved entirely from solid ice.

8. Simon Beck: snowshoe geometry

Beck creates large patterns by walking through snow in snowshoes. The original account connected his work with his experience in orienteering and mapmaking, a useful clue to the planning behind shapes that can look spontaneous in a photograph.

A line on this scale consists of many individual steps. Repeated routes establish boundaries, while the broader layout becomes visible from an elevated viewpoint. Reported dimensions and working times vary by piece; the figures attached to one drawing should not be treated as specifications for all his work.

9. Luke Aleckson: Imprinted Snow

Aleckson’s project explores snow as a surface that can receive patterned impressions. Instead of building a freestanding object, the work changes the texture of an existing layer of snow.

That makes it closer to a temporary print than a conventional sculpture. Low light can make small ridges and hollows visible through shadow, while fresh snow can erase them. The impression records contact with the surface rather than an object placed on top of it; its legibility changes as sunlight moves across the snow.

10. Sonja Hinrichsen: Snow Drawings

Hinrichsen’s Snow Drawings are large landscape works created through walking, often with participants. Her work uses the repeated movement of people through snow to develop flowing patterns that can be photographed from above.

Hinrichsen’s snow drawings develop through coordinated movement across a landscape. Participation is part of the work: individual walkers contribute tracks that become a larger pattern when viewed from a distance. The temporary marks connect bodily movement with the terrain beneath it, while photographs allow viewers to see relationships that may be difficult to recognise from ground level.

A useful way to compare the projects

Look first at what makes the marks: ice figures and melting in Minimum Monument, footsteps in the snow drawings, impressions in Aleckson’s work, and reflected light in Snow Palette. Then consider how the audience experiences the result. Some works are encountered at arm’s length; others depend on an elevated view or a film.

Their disappearance is not always a failure of preservation. For many of these projects, change is part of the intended experience. Photographs and videos preserve a record, while the original snow or ice returns to a different form. That is what connects this varied collection without making all ten projects the same kind of artwork.