the art of Snow Snowmen taken beyond corncob pipes and button noses in craft collaboration

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Between the glossy (read waterproof) covers of “Snowmen: Snow Creatures, Crafts, and Other Winter Projects,” inspiration jumps off the pages. Well, actually, if you lived in Florida, you probably wouldn’t find much of value in there, but since we’re here, in the tundra, well into our first foot of snow for the season, “Snow Bunnies” and a “Porcupineneedle” and even a 7-foot-tall snowman sound feasible.

“Snowmen,” a beautifully illustrated cross between a cookbook and a craft guide, is the product of a collaboration among three friends in California – a sculptor, a photographer and an editor-writer at Chronicle

Books. Peter Cole, Frankie Frankeny and Leslie Jonath set off to Lake Tahoe for a week to reinvent the snowman.

They reworked the classics, such as “Seven-Foot Frosty,” a taller version of the classic, three-snowball snowman, built around a trash can for support. They also came up with some new ideas, such as “Jackie Snow,” a snow head adorned with big black sunglasses, a scarf, red-pepper lips and a string of faux pearls. Their “Porcupineneedle” bristles with clusters of pine needles as quills and a tail made of bushy branches, all driven into a clump of snow with a screwdriver.

“It’s like looking for shapes in the clouds – a lot of what you make can be inspired by what you see,” Jonath said during a phone interview from her California office. “We let the environment give us ideas.”

So did we. After flipping through the pages of “Snowmen,” my editor and I decided to try the “Snow Angel,” a conical pile of snowballs illuminated from within. Except we gave it our own twist. We planned to build our snow sculpture by the sea, where there was snow, so it was only natural that we give our creation a nautical theme. So we took the basic structure of the “Snow Angel,” added a few elements, and sketched out a snow lighthouse. Of course, we thought it was a perfect idea.

We had snow. We’re creative, or so we thought. Snow lighthouse? No problem.

Or, in this case, snow problem.

The ground at Gouldsboro Point was coated by what appeared to be snow. It looked like snow. It felt like snow. But it didn’t pack like snow. It didn’t pack at all. And to top it all off, only about an inch of fluffy snow was usable. The underlayer was hard and crusty and completely useless in our snow-sculpting efforts.

When I arrived, cookie sheets full of ice balls rested on the porch railing at my editor’s house. She walked out, handed me a pair of gloves and another cookie sheet, and explained that we’d have to improvise.

So off I went, gathering dry snow, taking it inside, dousing it with water and forming snowballs. We tried a spray bottle, as the book suggested, but we needed a little more water than that.

When they arrived at Lake Tahoe, the authors of “Snowmen” had a similar experience. They had a week to put a book together, but there hardly was any snow. They did, however, have a plethora of ice chunks. So they made do, as we did.

“We actually got to talk about the technique of packing the snow, then the next day we got all kinds of snow,” Jonath said.

We couldn’t wait for snow. We had one day, an inch of usable snow, a kitchen sink, cookie sheets and some buckets. Of course, the next day, a foot of fresh, sticky snow fell at Gouldsboro Point.

We were fortunate that “Snowmen” has a whole section devoted to working with difficult snow. It details techniques to carve, mold, pack and roll snow.

In addition to the kitchen sink, we used a knife, a screwdriver, a spray bottle, a bucket of water and some lights to create our lighthouse and porcupine. The book suggests using wooden stakes, boards and screens as a framework for some of the larger and more intricate sculptures in the book. We stuck to the basics.

We also tried to create “Jackie Snow,” a loving tribute to the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The snow we used to make the head was too hard to stick the sunglasses into, though, so we had to cut holes in the head, which looked kind of frightening. Then the red pepper slices that we used to make the lips ran, creating a rather gory-looking depiction of Jackie. So we threw her into the ocean and devoted our efforts to the porcupine.

Perhaps the cubist “PicasSnow,” with a butternut-squash mouth, a beret and a paintbrush would’ve worked better. “MeduSnow,” with a tangled mass of green beans for hair and mirror eyes, also looks like a fun project, given the right conditions.

“It’s this great way of playing around with props,” Jonath said of the snow heads. “I think that’s kind of the joy of childhood. You can really use your imagination.”

It’s more fun playing in the snow when you’re a kid. You don’t have deadlines, nor do you have photographers coming by to take pictures of your artistry (or lack thereof).

Even though we were playing in the snow for work, it brought back some of the joy of a “snow day,” when we got to stay home from school and build igloos or snowmen or just fall backward and make a snow angel.

“What I liked about it was that it was a family activity,” Jonath said. “Most people who grow up in the snow can look at it as a nostalgic experience. Everyone has some memory of a snowman they built sometime in their lives.”

How to make a ?Porcupineneedle?

Instructions taken from ?Snowmen: Snow Creatures, Crafts, and Other Winter Projects,? by Peter Cole, Frankie Frankeny and Leslie Jonath, Copyright 1998, Chronicle Books.

Supplies:

Screwdriver

Pine needle clusters

Five pine cones

Two almonds

One branch with leaves or pine needles attached

To make the body, roll a snowball approximately 3 feet long by 2 feet round. Smooth the ball into an oval. Roll a smaller ball approximately one-third the size of the first and attach it to the front end of the body. Using the screwdriver, poke 2-inch-deep holes in rows across the length of the figure. Insert a cluster of pine needles into each hole. The closer you space the holes, the thicker the fur will be. Press in four of the pine cones for feet, then press in the final cone for the nose. Press in the almond eyes and lay the branch at the back for the tail.