snow for the inside

art pieces

about

I am Deborah Lema and I glue snowflakes

I enjoy a deliciously warm home in the Wisconsin winter as much as anybody. But when it snows, I put on a lot of clothes, announce that I am going out snowflaking, and head outside. Outside is where snowflake meets glue. It is delicate work. I quite enjoy it.

how  

I catch some snow on a dark board, and when a flake catches my eye, I gently (so gently) transfer it to a piece of cold glass with a paintbrush. I add cold glue and sandwich the glued flake with another piece of glass. Over the next number of days, the water in the snowflake reacts with the glue, essentially fossilizing itself. A permanent snowflake impression is left in the glue—a fossilized image of the brief moment it existed.

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Some are broken; sometimes the glue does unexpected

things. There are many snowflake fossils that I simply

catalog with the date and temperature and then store.

But sometimes they are just stunning. And sometimes

the imperfections and relics of the process create

something—a sense of space perhaps, a story of their

own. Something resonates. And then it’s picture time.

I enjoy playing with light and backgrounds in order to create different photographic effects. Occasionally I edit out mitten fuzz or distracting glue artefacts, or do something like brighten a dark picture, but I don't use filters or otherwise computer-generate these images. I prefer them a little messy, a little imperfect.

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