Brooklyn-based author/illustrator Shelly Jackson is experimenting with a new form of graffiti writing—typography in melted snowflakes. For a project called Snow, Jackson is printing 805 words into a few inches of fallen snow. Instead of striking her mark on a surface (as with painting and drawing), Jackson literally melts the surface away, leaving only a trace.
This is the third time Jackson has tried to complete her snowy story, which she began in 2010 with the sentence, "'To approach snow too closely is to forget what it is,' said the girl who cried snowflakes." Since her initial attempts in the frigid weather, she has perfected her technique, using her fingers, pencils, and sticks to make forms that look as close to printed words as possible. She keeps a record of her progress on Flickr.
When asked by The Guardian why she chose snow as her medium, Jackson said, "Because I have a fascination with the relationship between words and space (a page is a space, but that often escapes our notice), with the idea of publishing a story on or over a landscape (here, on Brooklyn), so that all the complicated activity that goes on in that territory gets unpredictably mixed up with the story."
Jackson is known for writing in unusual mediums. Previously she tattooed a story on the skin of 2,000 volunteers in 2003. What's notable about Snow however, is that her medium is actually the absence of medium. Instead of writing with snow, Jackson writes in snow, dissolving her canvas to create an image. The fact that her words will disappear completely as the snow melts doubly asserts the temporal quality of her work. All that's left are her photographs.
[via The Guardian]