close

Woman takes snow-building to creative heights

4 min read
1 / 3

Maureen Lucas, a nurse at Chartiers-Houston Middle/High School, is known for the snowmen she creates during the winter months.

2 / 3

Maureen Lucas takes advantage of winter days and creates snowmen that delight her neighbors and friends.

3 / 3

Maureen Lucas’ snowmen appear in various locations – poolside, in the yard, and in trees.

Maureen Lucas has taken building a snowman – the quintessential celebration of winter – to a higher level.

If you ask Lucas, a nurse at Chartiers-Houston Junior/Senior High School, if she wants to build a snowman (the catchy “Do You Want to Build a Snowman” song from Disney’s “Frozen” comes to mind), the answer, always, is yes.

Since she was a student at Penn State University, Lucas has been sculpting snowmen whenever enough snow falls.

But Lucas doesn’t simply stack snowballs on top of each other and stick in a carrot for a nose and twigs for arms.

Lucas, jokingly referred to among friends as the Picasso of snowmen, creates clever snowmen that have entertained friends, family and neighbors for years.

“I try to make as many as I can, but I’m at the mercy of the snow,” said Lucas. “The whole neighborhood enjoys it. Neighborhood kids will make requests, and it’s fun to accommodate them.”

For a police officer in her neighborhood, she fashioned a policeman snowman, complete with a police hat and badge, who stood watch near a stop sign.

When a neighbor asked Lucas to house-sit, she built a snowman in a tree to help keep an eye on things.

She’s made birds, dogs, cats, turkeys, and Easter bunnies.

Among her personal favorites is a bikini-clad snow woman lounging poolside on a raft, which she crafted last year.

“It was one of those late snows, like in March, and there was a ton of snow. Not all snow is created equal, and this was very workable snow,” said Lucas. “You have to work with what you get. That’s the challenge.”

Snow, Lucas said, is finicky.

If the temperature is too warm, it’s too wet to work with; if it’s too cold, it’s too powdery to make snowballs.

Last week, when a snowfall dumped a couple inches of snow in Washington County, Lucas sprung into action.

Initially, the snow was too powdery. But Lucas was undeterred: she poured water onto it to make it more workable.

Lucas often doesn’t know what kind of snow art she’s going to tackle when snow falls.

“The snow kind of dictates what you make. I don’t usually know what I’m making until I roll the first few balls, and then I go from there,” said Lucas. “The time of year also kind of influences what I make.”

Lucas acknowledged that her passion for building snowmen “could be a personality flaw.”

“I’ve had my husband shovel the snow up the driveway where the sun can hit it. You have to shovel strategically so that you can make the snow workable. He thinks I’m crazy,” she said.

Lucas has a bin filled with hats, sunglasses, eyes, noses, pipes, and shoes that she pulls from when she’s creating a snowman.

The only limit on Lucas’s creativity might be her diminutive height.

“I can’t make them taller than 5 feet because I’m older now and I can’t lift (the snowballs) that high, so I adjust accordingly,” Lucas said.

For Lucas, building snowmen is a creative outlet that gets her outdoors.

“I’m an outside person. I like being outside. And it’s a stress-reliever,” said Lucas. “It’s a way to get through winter, when there’s no sun and it’s dreary.”

And, she enjoys making people happy.

“It’s great when people comment on it. The neighbors look forward to it,” said Lucas. “It’s spreading joy. It’s good to spread something that isn’t COVID.”

CUSTOMER LOGIN

If you have an account and are registered for online access, sign in with your email address and password below.

NEW CUSTOMERS/UNREGISTERED ACCOUNTS

Never been a subscriber and want to subscribe, click the Subscribe button below.

Starting at $3.75/week.

Subscribe Today