Sonja Hinrichsen Walks in Circles to Create These Spectacular Snow Drawings in Colorado

Try walking a day in this woman's shoes - on Saturday, artist <a href="http://www.s-hinrichsen.net/">Sonja Hinrichsen</a> and 9 others teamed up at Colorado's Rabbit Ears Pass to create these incredible drawings made entirely from footsteps. In a project Hinrichsen aptly calls "Snow Drawings", the installation spans several hundred feet, boldly engraving itself into the expansive snow-covered meadow. The undertaking was organized as a community art project that offered three days of collaborative snow drawing as part of the <a href="http://steamboatspringsarts.com/">Steamboat Springs Arts Council</a> exhibit "Snow Crystal".

Hinrichsen's "Snow Drawings" project is a community endeavor that has run for 3 days over the past two weeks, and has relied on the enthusiasm of local inhabitants to create.

A contemporary artist visiting from San Francisco, Hinrichsen has been doing similar projects on her own across the country from <a href="http://www.inhabitat.com/nyc/">New York</a> to Aspen, but in Steamboat, she felt that the outdoor- and snow-oriented community would be a perfect fit for her new idea.

While the circles appear as deliberate and methodical arrangement of circles and spirals, the artist was anything but rigid in her instruction. She encouraged individuals to give variety to their gaits to offer different weights and depth to the patterns in the soft snow underfoot. “You walk how you walk,” she said. “It’s like if you imagine working with different kinds of pencils, like really hard ones or soft ones. … It adds a diversity to it that’s really cool.”

In just a few days, the artwork has already begun to fade, and with more snow and gusty winds forecasted, the designs will soon be indiscernible. However, the artist isn't sad, it's the impermanent nature of the project that intrigues her.

“I’m not so into making art that lasts,” she told <a href="http://www.steamboattoday.com/news/2012/feb/04/snow-drawings-leave-lasting-impression-steamboat/">Steamboat Today</a>. “The world is saturated with manmade projects. I don’t think I need to add more things to the planet.”

However, the finished piece was captured captured on something more everlasting. Photographs and video documented the hours of snow stomping that occurred on Saturday, and at the end of the session the artist went up in an airplane to capture aerial images of the project.