Layers change the story

Much of Daniela Snow’s art prioritizes process over finality.

The New Hampshire artist and former student of North Idaho College often adds layers and layers on top of each other in her work, to the point where the art is a culmination of many different ideas and emotions.

“When you see things evolve, you get to see things you didn’t anticipate. You get to see things you never thought could happen,” Snow said in an interview with Coeur Voice. “Then it’s like, ‘Add another layer of paint,’ and you can surprise yourself.”

Snow’s work is on display this semester in NIC’s Corner Gallery in Boswell Hall. The show, “The Scars that Shape Us,” sees the artist exploring an evolution of emotions following the death of her father using layers of paint, foil acrylic pens, wood and canvas board.

The project began as a personal examination of her grief.

“I always gave myself rules (when I worked), but when he passed away, I was standing in my studio and it was one of those moments when I didn’t know what to do,” Snow said. “I couldn’t calm my mind down enough.

“I was always into layering and heavy into patterns. (With this project) I started pouring paint, because it felt as messy as I felt inside,” she continued. “It was the first time I poured, and I began pouring patterns on top of each other, working through my emotions.”

The process took Snow to surprising places.

“I’m dealing with the grief of my father, dealing with the anger, then all of a sudden things from my childhood would come up, and suddenly I’m ripping up the scabs of all these different things,” Snow said. “I eventually went back to my layering process through painting and working through the emotions.”

NIC art instructor Michael Horswill, who had Snow as a student, said her pieces are often “artifacts of an artist’s hand and heart at work.”

“I see the passage of time and feel the recurrence of memory. There is an obsessive beauty to these paintings that requires one’s attention and presence,” Horswill said. “Danny embraces the relationship between herself, her materials and her ideas that are essential to create the kind of art she produces.”

A native of Germany, Snow spent much of her early life in Colorado before moving to North Idaho. Her earliest artistic efforts were chainsaw carvings.

“Basically you buy a chainsaw, you go in the back yard and you work on it,” Snow said. “The very first bear I attempted looked like a bear, but once you cut something off, it’s gone. I did quite a few ugly pieces, you know where one ear is three times the size of another, but you just keep going.”

She was then inspired to expand her canvas.

“I lived in Athol, and every time I drove down Highway 95, there was this huge sign that said something like, ‘NIC will change your life forever,’” Snow said. “So I took every art class I could get my hands on, and I worked myself through the different mediums … I like to mix it up. I still don’t like to limit myself to one medium.”

Horswill said Snow dedicated herself to every assignment and style thrown at her at NIC.

“She frequently would go beyond what was assigned and push herself to create work that would connect to the project parameters but also to her inner vision of what she wanted to create,” Horswill said.

Snow graduated from NIC in 2009 and went on to earn BAs in fine arts and anthropology from Eastern Washington University. She would later earn a Master of Fine Art, Visual Arts at the New Hampshire Institute of Art in 2016.

Horswill said Snow’s evolution sets an example to current students hoping to fully apply themselves to the practice of artmaking.

“Danny was not scared of making mistakes, and she would frequently realize that what she thought at first was a ‘mistake’ was actually something to learn from,” he said. “She also embraced the critique process, because she recognized right away that it was a fantastic opportunity for honest and useful feedback … this is often something that students don’t realize until much later in their art studies.”

Much of Snow’s work utilizes wood, including a piece that made the 3,000-mile journey when she moved from Idaho to New Hampshire. She took a piece of bark with her that has since gone through numerous layers and expansions in the years since she started the project. It’s a way of “reflecting a life intrinsically connected to the present and the accumulation of a past,” Snow said.

“There were a lot of memories left behind there and I wanted to scoop them all up and take them with me,” Snow said. “Because I like process, I began to think how long it would take to grow the tree from inside the piece. So you keep painting and the piece has its own identity. It’s changing shape, and it gives me different ideas for other things."

Snow has taken pictures of the project through various stages, and it’s helped her to see the subtleties of evolution.

“It reflects on what we’re doing. We always do the same things over and over again, but the bark shows that those things do change,” she said.

With much of her work, process eventually dictates when an individual piece is finished. The process serves as an entry point for the viewer to appreciate the work, she said. For the piece inspired by her father in “The Scars that Shape Us,” she’s hoping her audience will approach the work more viscerally.

“I never anticipated I would put this body of work in a show. I did those for me, and they were really personal,” Snow said. “It’s really not that important for the viewer to know what the artist went through (on these pieces), but I do think somebody can identify with those emotions.”

“The Scars that Shape Us” will be on display in the Corner Gallery in North Idaho College’s Boswell Hall. Safety procedures are in place, including requirements of physical distancing and face coverings.

A digital lecture and slide presentation will be available at www.nic.edu/CornerGallery beginning today and will run through Dec. 11. Visit www.dassnow.com to check out more of Snow’s work.