Beautiful Mountain Snow Spirals Created by Artist Sonja Hinrichsen and Her Snowshoed Feet

KQED Arts recently profiled visual artist Sonja Hinrichsen who creates “Snow Drawings“, giant spiral imprints that she makes with her snowshoed feet on mountains around the world. Hinrichsen explained during the interview how she got started and why spirals are important to her .

Snow drawings started out of play. I was at an artist residency in Colorado and I had snowshoes because I wanted to hike in the mountains. I found those really big pristine fields of snow and I just had to do something with them so I started walking these patterns and it became interesting to me when I took out my camera and realized that the shadow that gets cast into the imprint and makes the pattern if there is no Sun there’s no pattern. …I feel like spirals are inherent in us and out nature. Our galaxy is a spiral. Our fingerprint is sort of a spiral. So I feel like its a form that we all understand.