Meet Snowball: it is a sculpture made to resemble the dogs that kids in New Orleans make out of Mardi Gras beads. Snowball will ultimately be auctioned off as part of the Louisiana SPCA’s (LA/SPCA) Paws on Parade public art fundraiser. Peter Mayer is a long-time supporter of the LA/SPCA, a private nonprofit organization dedicated to the elimination of animal suffering.

 

Photos by Paulina Nguyen, Associate Interactive Designer

Many of the other artists working the bead dog sculptures were simply painting the forms, but not really using the sculpture itself to transform it into something different. So, we thought about how we could take the form of the sculpture, which is set, and use it to our advantage to create something uniquely New Orleans. What better way to use a big sculpture of spheres than to form it into a New Orleans snowball?

We completely changed the original sculpture by cutting off the feet of the bead dog and using buckets to create the styrofoam cups that snowballs come in. Then, we added a textured base to mimic crushed ice. Finally, we painted it a bold strawberry flavor color, with some other flavor colors as accents, and added a straw.

You can look for Snowball around our Camp Street office, and he may even make an appearance at some of your favorite snowball stands this summer.