2019 Community Snow Drawing
- Carpenter Ranch, Hayden
The Yampa Valley community is invited to join the Bud Werner Memorial Library and The Nature Conservancy in creating a large, landscape-scale snow drawing by walking patterns with snowshoes on a snowy haymeadow at the Carpenter Ranch.
Volunteers meet at the Carpenter Ranch near Hayden at 10 a.m., where we'll share info about the landscape that is our canvas, answer questions, and offer in spired ideas and instruction for how to delve into your own contributions to the snow pattern before we head out to the haymeadow. We will walk the meadow until it is full (likely around noon) but folks can leave earlier if they need to, or stay later if they so desire.
Participants must bring their own snowshoes, snacks and water.
Check out some of our past community snow drawings.
History of Steamboat's grassroots snow art designs
Initially, we collaborated with environmental artist Sonja Hinrichsen, who first came to Steamboat Springs in 2010 via a Colorado Art Ranch residency at The Nature Conservancy's Carpenter Ranch. In winter 2011, she made a solo installation on the Carpenter Ranch, then decided to get the community involved -- which is where TNC and the library stepped in, along with hundreds of community volunteers. She returned during winter 2012 for the series of community snow drawings with local artist volunteers on Rabbit Ears Pass, which received national and international attention. She came back to work with local artists again for multiple snow drawings on Lake Catamount.
Now we carry on with this annual grassroots effort, led communally by the creative and athletic participants who walk the designs. In 2017, volunteers translated this grassroots event into an experience of "Finding Peace" on the local landscape. Surrounded by a peace sign, the patterns were inspired by the hearts and minds of local participants. In 2018, we created "Snow Stitching in Nature"... a quilt on the snowy landscape. Aerial videos capturing both of these installations are posted on this page. More than 200 volunteers from the Yampa Valley Community have worked on these community installations to date, and we look forward to sharing another new, beautiful design for 2019.
The Community Snow Drawings are sponsored by The Nature Conservancy's Carpenter Ranch and the Bud Werner Memorial Library.