Sonja Hinrichsen’s Snow Drawings: Six Stages of a Growing Project

On the ground, the activity can look as simple as following the person ahead. From above, those steps become sweeping loops, repeated circles and lines that give a snowy field a completely new rhythm.

Walking becomes the drawing tool

Sonja Hinrichsen’s work includes large snow drawings made through participation and repeated movement. Her name is Hinrichsen, rather than the misspelling that appears in some older captions. The collective aspect also matters: these are not all the work of one anonymous person walking alone.

The wider photographs reveal relationships that participants cannot see in full from their own position. A single curve makes sense locally; the aerial view explains how it belongs to the whole.

A temporary surface gives the work its character

Snow will change, so the photograph preserves a particular stage of the artwork. Compare these deliberate paths with footprints reshaped by wind. For another use of repetition to create a recognisable form, explore owl-shaped log art.

From one artist’s footsteps to collective work

The original gallery begins with Snowmass Village, Colorado, in 2009, where Hinrichsen’s snowshoe walks during a residency developed into drawing. Those early images establish the basic idea: repeated movement can change a large white surface without adding a different material.

Ooms Pond and Carpenter Ranch, 2011

The Ooms Pond work near Chatham, New York, brought local volunteers into the process. The Hayden, Colorado, photographs identify Carpenter Ranch and the Yampa River setting. Keeping those locations separate preserves the project’s development rather than making the gallery look like one continuous event.

The original account stressed how much the completion depended on suitable weather. That is part of working in snow: the surface is both the drawing material and something that may change before the drawing is finished.

Rabbit Ears Pass and Catamount Lake

The Rabbit Ears Pass work was dated to two weekends in early 2012. Catamount Lake followed in 2013, with the account describing a larger volunteer effort over several days. Those details make the collective labour visible alongside the aerial patterns.

From participant level, someone follows a line and sees only nearby steps. From above, loops and neighbouring forms connect. The two perspectives explain why the photographs are an essential record of the work, not merely publicity for it.

Revisiting the Yampa River’s former course

The 2014 project used the snowy surface of a reservoir to evoke the river’s earlier flow, according to the original account. That gives the pattern a geographical subject as well as an abstract form. The drawing becomes a way of thinking about a landscape changed by a dam.

The artist’s name is Sonja Hinrichsen. Retaining that spelling, the dates and the project locations makes the gallery more useful than a general claim that one person made mysterious circles in the snow.

Participation leaves a visible trace

Each walker contributes a small part of a pattern that becomes legible at a larger scale. That connection between individual action and the shared result is central to the project’s character.