In the 1880s, Vermont farmer Wilson Bentley captured some of the first known microphotographs of a snowflake. It was a moment of wonder suspended on glass, showing nature’s ephemeral geometry frozen in time. In 1903, Bentley gave the images to the Smithsonian for safekeeping. Now in the public domain and widely available, anyone can enjoythose first amazing images of real snowflakes' detail.

One of those images has become my starting point creating a series of  snowflake designs in a variety of styles. 

The process began with restoration. I digitally cleaned and brightened my chosent original photograph, removing the traces of time while preserving Bentley’s meticulous capture of symmetry. Once isolated, the six-pointed structure became a blank canvas, and I altered the colors to blue and white, and added a snowflake icon while maintining the visual integrity of the original crystal.


I followed Bentley's concept of making the tiny visible, and enlarged the image enough to fit on clothing either as a single focal image, or part of a pattern of identical images. I tried straight lines and offset lines, which would fit on textiles, wrapping papers and other backgrounds. 

After that, I tried stacking them to create a pyramid shape. It reminded me so much of a mountain, that I added a tiny skier image zooming down the side. Then keeping the time of year in mind, I added a large full moon with Santa and his reindeer flying across it above the peak.


In all the finished pieces, Bentley's original 1903 snowflake image remains at the heart;  infinitely multiplied, and reinvented. One flake becomes a pattern, a mountain, a myth. In that cycle, I see the quiet potential of creative transformation: how even the smallest detail can hold entire worlds.