Daniel Swanigan Snow

A Thumbful of Snow (Greenwood, Archer and Pine)

Opens Friday January 17, 6-9PM / Exhibition On View January 17 - April 26 By Appointment

By comparing the photograph of Totem III from 2014 in this poster to Totem III in its current state installed to the left in the hallway, one gets a quick impression of the fluid state of Daniel Swanigan Snow’s approach to art making. Nothing is static, everything is in flux. Until a work is purchased or otherwise taken out of the possession of the artist, even after it is “finished,” it is always vulnerable to alteration.

Snow’s basic method is assemblage, that is to say, the putting together of disparate things to create a single entity. These entities are often kinetic or have an internal light source that can be either turned on or off, the resulting cast shadows are considered part of the composition. For any sculptor physical material is important, but for Snow, time and light are also manipulable elements; consequently, his work takes on aspects of performance and theater. 

This performative tendency can be attributed to the fact that Snow is an actor and has spent most of his adult life in theater and film. He describes being dazzled as a boy in Erie, Pennsylvania by the transformative magic of the stage lights in his local theater. Yet, an actor is always dependent on the larger production for expression, and this began to feel limiting for Snow later in life. To compensate, he began pouring his excess actor creativity into transforming, not himself into characters, but now objects into art. This personal artistic expansion happened for Snow at the age of 54, over ten years ago. He’s been immensely prolific ever since, gaining much critical attention in the genre of, what is generally designated, “Outsider Art.”

Snow works from a basement studio in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, which he calls his “laboratory.” His larger sculptures also spill out into the yard, and are arranged with the intention of catching the attention of his neighbors. Interestingly, “yard art” has been a steady form for marginalized, self-taught artists in the South for over a century where they caught the eye of a young Robert Rauschenberg growing up in Texas. This outside outsider form, yard art, later influenced Rauschenberg’s “combines,” an assemblage painting technique he developed in the 1950s. Decades later, in turn, it is these combines that Snow happened to see in a magazine that inspired him to start making art. 

We have come full circle then, from outsider art in Texas to the ultimate New York insider, Rauschenberg, back to Snow, once again, as an outsider living here in New York. Although, critic Priscilla Frank, in an article for the Huffington Post, references Snow’s assertion that an artist first has to be outside before becoming an insider. So it seems Snow has no intention of staying outside in the yard forever; ergo, we thank you for allowing A Thumbful of Snow into your home.

This exhibition is curated by David Dixon.

Click below to hear the audio recording of Daniel Swanigan Snow’s performance from February 23, Happy Birthday, Dr. Du Bois.