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Will Weisz’s Transient Abstractions

LEFT TO RIGHT My first trip to Mt. Baker, WA, was a quick mission with a friend of a friend I’d never met. New experiences, a minor injury, and memories I still go back to. It was everything I hoped for. Everything started to fall into place when I arrived at Bluewood, WA—my home mountain during school, where I landed my first job in the industry, and where I first fell in love with the trees. Spout Springs, OR, is where I learned to splitboard and developed a deep love for just turning a board. Art and Captions: Will Weisz

Words Alastair Spriggs. Art and Captions Will Weisz

“I walked into my first thesis class wearing baggy jeans, wanting to hang snowboard photos on the wall,” Will Weisz said with a big grin on his face. “Some classmates had a hard time understanding how snowboard photography could be considered art. To them, it seemed like a fun, commercial activity.”

It was 2022 and he was entering his senior year at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA. The then-22-year-old took on this critique as a challenge. Surrounded by a cohort exploring art through various mediums and forms, Weisz discovered abstract expressionism—an art form that aims to convey emotions and ideas through non-recognizable scenes—and began experimenting with recurring themes, patterns and layers over the following year.

Eventually, everything came together in his final thesis, titled “The Ineffable Beauty of Transient Moments: An attempt to document the Ephemeral Nature of snowboarding, its intricacies, and feelings.” Here, he used photography and silk-screening methods to capture and share the beauty of three transformative snowboarding experiences.

Will Weisz’s Transient Abstractions

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