Snow Globes
 

My younger cousin collected snow globes as a child. Her father would bring her back a new collectible from wherever he had traveled and she'd line them up on shelves. These were the usual cheap variety, the plastic ones with the Empire State Building you could buy at any shop lining Times Square. They weren't very interesting to look at, but I liked the idea of them.

I once owned a snow globe for about 10 minutes, from the time my mother gave me the unwrapped package at Christmas to the time the globe slipped out of my hands and shattered on the floor. It contained a scene from The Wizard of Oz. I actually really liked it (a piece of a story recreated and stuck in time), but the store no longer had that particular globe in stock so I exchanged it for Aeon Flux tapes. Not a bad trade as far as I was concerned.

Occasionally I'll come across one that I note as beautiful or charming. A little world sculpted and infinitely contained. A frozen moment in time, an object living up to its name. The idea of the snow globe was used to great effect in Sebold's The Lovely Bones, and in the zombie film Cemetery Man ("I'd give my life to be dead." - hah!), based on the novel Dellamorte Dellamore's (which I haven't read).

I came across these today, and they are miniature stories on pause. Grim and delightful.



Like a favorite horror movie Dolls, I can almost imagine that these are real people trapped by a punishing witch. There is something so otherworldly about them. Each deserves its own longer story.

Grim and delightful indeed.

Those are very cool and quite calming in a way.

It would be impossible for me to go to that gallery showing and not shake all of them. Very cool find, A!

That is interesting; I feel similarly calmed looking at them, as well. Felt similarly walking through blizzards in NYC on my way to and from work. The flurry of snow creates a blanket of quiet, and that quiet is almost evidenced in these works.

I was wondering about that. You don't really get the full effect without being able to see the insides stirred up, and yet I'm sure you're not allowed to touch them. I wonder if that is something the artists take into consideration. They are making objects that are meant to be handled, but as sculptures in a gallery we understand we're not supposed to touch them.

A sculpture teacher I had in college made a giant wooden ball and covered it with iron handles. The desire to touch it, climb it, was strong in most viewers, but you weren't supposed to touch it. It actually angered him that some people would touch it, because there wasn't a sign that said not to and clearly it was an object intended for interaction. Seemed silly that he couldn't grasp that.

Also cool when something you make is not viewed as you intended, even if that's frustrating for some artists.

Clearly, when on display, there should be some mechanical device that periodically shakes the globes, so they can be properly viewed. That's the compromise made in a gallery situation.


I happen to love them with or without the snow. Not only do they practically MAKE ME imagine being in the beautiful, miniaturized scene ... they also somehow remind me of the intricate scenes I've seen carved miraculously into the heads of pins.

Oooh, the Museum of Jurassic Technology has a small collection of "eye of the needle" miniature sculptures, which include a Goofy and an Napoleon.

Those are really cool!!! And Dolls has been added to my netflix list, woot!

Awesome. If you hate it, my apologies.