My Adventure: by Simon Beck
My first snow drawing was on the small lake beside the building where I live in the ski resort of Les Arcs, in the French Alps. At the time, I lacked basic pieces of equipment such as an internet connection, digital camera, and snow shoes. I was also still taking part in competitive orienteering and regarded drawing as low grade physical activity, not a good thing when one should be doing training for running, so in the 5 years between 2004 and 2009 only about 15 drawings were made.
But when I quit orienteering in 2009 I decided to make snow drawing my priority winter activity, and give drawing priority over skiing whenever conditions were right, with the long term intention of building a collection of photos for a coffee table book. I was also amazed to find (on the internet) nobody else was doing similar, and when, in 2011, I set up a facebook page during the 4 weeks I was out of action following a medical operation, the photos were shared round and my fame spread. The strategy was borrowed from Bill Gates: Give away some pretty good photos in the hope of monetizing the top quality material.
Soon invitations to do promotional material (mostly clothing and cars) came in, but also visits to other resorts because the local tourism offices wanted to see drawings in their own resorts. What I do is a bit dependent on conditions being right and sometimes we have had to wait a while but there have only been a handful of complete failures.
In 2014 I was invited over to the USA to make a sand drawing on a beach on the east coast as a public performance. I felt it would not be advizeable for my first ever sand drawing but that inspired me to make sand drawings additional to the snow drawings. These have not been such a commercial success as there are many more people making sand drawings, but I did a few paid performances. Most were made on the superb beach 40 minutes drive from where my parents were living.
I have a vague aim to make a total of 1000 drawings by the time I reach the age of 80. At the time of writing I am 67 and have made 203 sand drawings, about 480 snow, and last Summer I made 4 drawings in the local resort (Arc 2000) by moving rocks around (in addition to 19 peace symbols and the words “Pray for Peace” in 3 places. Very few people are aware of these, so it remains to be seen whether the shit is going to hit the fan when the snow melts!
