elleven Magazine Issue 1 | Page 37

photo credits: Simon Beck A common saying among skiers ‘easy to pick up, hard to master,’ skiing involves some serious skills when hitting the slopes. Even more skill needed when you’re using your legs as a spirograph in the snow. Simon is doing something brand new in terms of art; he is creating masterpieces simply with his legs, a set of snowshoes, a compass, badass balance and some very articulate planning. Simon uses the snow as his canvas creating incredible shapes and patterns. Done all by him, starting in the early hours of the morning, calculating the lines and curves, the snowy creations lasting until the next heavy snowfall. Beck can spend up to eleven hours meticulously stepping through freshly fallen snow, creating light marks in the snow with his briquette snowshoes. In 2014 Simon flew over to the snowy mountains of Megeve to draw French ready to wear clothing brand Vicomte A’s logo into the snow. The logo showed the brands V and A with the crown above, in an area of 1.3 hectares, or 3.2 acres. Favourite designs of his are 3D mathematical patterns that often replicate crop circles, the Somersby cider tree to trompe- l’oiel three-dimensional squares. The designs even have different effects when looked at different times of the day, or from different angles depending on how the sun hits them. 38