Art is… by Bev Jackson Cotter

 

Do I dare write a column about how beautiful snow is?

I know that some of you are already grumbling, what does she mean beautiful? Doesn’t she know how much work it is? How our plow drivers are out at all hours of the day and night just trying to keep the roads open so people can get to work, to school, to their responsibilities?

Beautiful? Where is she coming from?

Just let me add, I know how much trouble a heavy layer of snow is. I know how a shovel works.

I grumble, too, when my driveway is cleared and then the snow plow drives by and throws in another load that is so heavy I cannot move it.

But, did you notice that the almost-8t inches we had a few Sundays ago created the loveliest scenes — snow on the branches of the pine trees, snow highlighting the rolling bark on the birch trees, snow piled high like little pyramids on the bird feeders, piles of snow enveloping (no pun intended) the mailbox by the driveway? And the snowmobilers and sleds were out in profusion.

They have been waiting for a snowfall like this all winter.

Granted, I don’t have to shovel the sidewalk or snowblow the driveway, and I don’t have to drive in the country where ditches are the same level as the roads and it is difficult to see which is which.

I can enjoy the snow. Besides, what do people in Minnesota talk about if not the weather?

“The Little Book of Snowflakes” by Kenneth Libbrecht is a delightful read. The author uses a photo-microscope to record snowflakes and has reproduced a series of enlarged, incredibly detailed pictures of nature’s wonders. He was raised in North Dakota, which should already make him an expert, and has a Ph.D. in physics. (My granddaughter who now lives in Minot said, “Gram’ma, You don’t know what winter is like until you’ve lived in North Dakota.)

The book contains beautiful photos and descriptions of snowflake formation as well as quotations about nature and its beauty.

I really liked this one by Fiona Macleod (1855-1905): “There is nothing in the world more beautiful than the forest clothed to its very hollows in snow. It is the still ecstasy of nature, wherein every spray, every blade of grass, every spire of reed, every intricacy of twig, is clad with radiance.”

Libbrecht prefers taking pictures of snowflakes during light snowfalls, with little wind, when the weather is especially cold, and he does say that the symmetrical flakes are the exception.

Usually, snow falls in crystal fragments, and he suggests that anyone can enjoy the symmetrical beauty of a six-sided, sometimes 12-sided, never eight-sided snowflake with an inexpensive magnifier and a curious eye.

Maybe that is what we are missing: the curious eye. We are so busy moving shovels full that we don’t even think about the single flake.

I was surprised when I googled winter paintings, at how many snow scenes there are available by a variety of artists and at a variety of prices. There are thousands of prints for sale nationwide and worldwide — beautiful winter scenes, animals, children, forests, cardinals, barns, churches, city streets, realism, folk art and abstract — art by people who see beauty in a snowfall.

I don’t know why I was surprised.

Bev Jackson Cotter is a member of The Albert Lea Art Center which just celebrated the season Feb. 21 with a Mardi Gras fundraiser in conjunction with the Freeborn County Historical Museum.