Handmade Snowflakes Bedeck Sleepy Hollow’s Beekman Ave.

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February 7, 2025

By Elizabeth Tucker—

When artist Kersten Harries was cleaning out the house she had just bought on Anderson Avenue in Sleepy Hollow, she found a closet full of postal supplies, including 450 Tyvek (priority mail) envelopes that stocked the former owner’s home office. She tried to return them, but the post office wouldn’t take them back. Because the envelopes couldn’t be recycled, she kept them. At a certain point in fall 2024, it occurred to her that if the envelopes were dismantled, she would have enough white material to cut 900 snowflakes, each approximately one foot in diameter.

The very scale of the task appealed to Harries. In 2020 during the COVID lockdown, she conceived a mural along the 520-ft. concrete wall that had formerly run along the Hudson River at the boundary of the General Motors plant. Asking community members “what are your hopes and dreams for the future?” she received submissions of artwork and poetry that a team of artists working with 150 volunteer painters transposed onto the wall. Although the wall was originally designated for demolition in spring 2021, the beloved mural remains on view.

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The snowflake project also draws inspiration from the community and, like the wall, skirts the boundary between permanent and temporary. Throughout the fall, Harries provided kits including Tyvek sheets and instructions and guided people of all ages in the cutting of snowflakes at events and locations that included TaSH, TUFSD Horseman Family Saturdays, the Sleepy Hollow Senior Center, Sleepy Hollow High School, Kendal-on-Hudson, the Life Center, the Neighborhood House, Sleepy Coffee Too, and many more.

The process is simple: the paper is folded into sixths, then cut, then unfolded. Even for the more experienced cutter, it can be hard to predict what the pattern will look like when unfolded so that, Harries says, there is always a moment of surprise. “I never grew tired of seeing the expression of pride and satisfaction on the faces of folks of all ages when they unfolded their unique snowflake,” she says.

The project has drawn elements of the community together

After collecting all 900 snowflakes, Harries hung them in storefronts along Beekman Avenue and along more than 150 linear feet of outdoor fences (since the Tyvek is weatherproof). People running errands along Beekman will discover that, just like natural snowflakes, no two hand-cut snowflakes are alike. Even more, the intricacy and variety of these paper works are truly astonishing. Harries’s project again reveals the unanticipated richness that results when many are asked to contribute.