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Spray paint ban in one city doesn’t disrupt this graffiti artist

By Allison Finch, AccuWeather staff writer

Published Feb 23, 2022 3:33 PM EDT | Updated Feb 23, 2022 3:47 PM EDT

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After a brief hiatus, a Chicago artist is back to using snow to create art. AccuWeather’s Emmy Victor introduces us to Eduardo Vea Keating.

Eduardo Vea Keating, a creative director for advertising and a Chicago resident, is known for leaving inspiring drawings around the Windy City. Rather than using the conventional paint and canvas that other artists use, Keating's medium of choice is snow, and he uses brick walls as the canvases to display his work.

More than 10 years ago, while waiting for a resort to open on a ski trip in Spain, his home country, Keating threw a snowball at the brick wall, and to his surprise, some of it stuck to the wall. Keating started playing with the snow that had stuck onto the wall, and from that moment on, he started what he calls "snow graffiti art."

Since that moment more than a decade ago, Keating has left his temporary mark on buildings and brick walls all over Chicago, which have been welcomed by most but not by all.

"I've had a couple of neighbors complaining but told them that it was just snow and it was going to melt away," Keating said in an interview with AccuWeather National Reporter Emmy Victor.

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Residents must be quick to catch a glimpse of his creations because of the ephemeral nature of his work. The snow graffiti melts away in the afternoon sun and, in mere hours, disappears. Sometimes, if the temperature and amount of sunlight are just right, the snow graffiti can stick around throughout the night and into the next day.

Snow graffiti covers bricks walls in Chicago, Illinois
Twitter

Since spray paint cans are banned for sale in the city, the creative approach of using snow to create these murals allows Keating to express his art without breaking any laws. In fact, curious police officers often wave when they notice it's just snow adorning the walls.

But Keating needs just the right type of wall to create these mesmerizing murals. Keating said that brick walls have just the right texture and a surface that is porous enough to allow snow to stick -- a better canvas than a flat cement wall provides.

Keating said that most murals take 10 to 20 minutes to create, but his most memorable mural took upwards of three hours to complete amid a displaced polar vortex that brought a fresh batch of snow and some of the coldest weather ever recorded in Chicago. This unforgettable weather system had a firm grip on the majority of the Upper Midwest, and an AccuWeather RealFeel® Temperature as low as 77 degrees below zero Fahrenheit was recorded at Thief River Falls, Minnesota.

On Jan. 27, 2019, Keating braved the cold weather to create this massive mural. The low temperature was 5 F below zero and reached a high of only 11 F throughout the day, but nevertheless, Keating started creating an abstract design on the wall with the fresh snow that had fallen just the day before. After more than three hours of improvising in the single-digit temperatures, he created a jaw-dropping skyline out of snow on the wall.

Eduardo Vea Keating working on a snow skyline mural in 2019. (Eduardo Vea Keating / Instagram / @noselanariz)

When Keating first began designing murals, he started with words or inspirational quotes, but, he admitted, that eventually "got boring," and he switched to creating more abstract designs and improvising, which is a lot more fun for him.

Recently, Keating took a bit of hiatus from the snow graffiti art and spent the majority of this winter in Spain. He said this was the first time he had been back to Spain in three years, and he spent just about two months there. While in Spain, Keating kept a close eye on the forecast in Chicago and missed out on one big snowstorm, which would have been perfect for creating more snow graffiti art. Keating recently returned to the Windy City and has started to create these captivating scenes again.

Credit: Eduardo Vea Keating (Instagram/@noselanariz)

He marked his return to the city with the words "I'm back" written in snow on a brick building and then shared his art in a photo posted on Instagram.

Chicago averages about 38.4 inches of snowfall for an entire season, which runs from November to April. This season, the climate site at O'Hare International Airport has measured just over 25.0 inches of snow and counting, which comes after the epic snow drought that the city experienced finally ended in late December 2021.

"For me, it is all about playing and having fun," said Keating.

He is hopeful that there will be more snow this season so that he can create more murals around the city.

See also:

Fast-moving danger was just around the bend up ahead
Stunning sea of 'snow monsters' takes over volcanic mountainside
Never-before seen images of Venus' surface unveiled

For the latest weather news check back on AccuWeather.com. Watch the AccuWeather Network on DIRECTV, Frontier, Spectrum, fuboTV, Philo, and Verizon Fios. AccuWeather Now is now available on your preferred streaming platform. 

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