GREENFIELD — The Force is strong with this one.
Greenfield’s resident snow sculptor, Rick Horton, has created yet another stunning sculpture with the year’s first substantial snowfall.
Baby Yoda now stands proudly outside his home, in the 500 block of South State Street, just a few blocks south of Main Street. At least until the sun melts it away.
Horton — who has garnered national attention for his work — looks forward to making a unique snow sculpture in his front yard with the first big snowfall each year, but conditions have to be just right.
“It has to be the perfect snow — at least four inches — and cold enough to freeze the next couple of days,” Horton said. “Otherwise it melts when the sun comes out. These sculptures take a lot of work, so I want them to be around for a while,” he said.
Horton’s wife, Melissa, is a big fan of his work, as are his two grown children and grandkids, who were especially fond of this year’s creation.
It took him seven hours to create the sculpture of Baby Yoda, also known as Grogu, or The Child.
Horton said he was drawing blanks on what to create this year until a few people suggested the pint-size green alien character, which has melted the hearts of Star Wars fans since it was unveiled in the TV series, “The Mandalorian,” in 2019.
Although the TV character is only 16 inches tall, the snow version in Horton’s front yard tops out at 5 feet — with his 3-foot-tall body standing atop a 2-foot-tall pedestal.
“I wanted it to be big enough for people driving by to see,” said Horton, who loves to entertain passersby with his unique snow masterpieces.
He gets plenty of people honking and slowing down to chat with him while he works, and loves engaging with followers on his popular Facebook page — The Snow Artist — where he has more than 13,000 followers.
While many of his followers are local, a few are from far-reaching corners of the globe, thanks to the news coverage Horton has gotten for past snow designs he’s created in the front yard of his Greenfield home.
In 2015, his sister in New York City hand-delivered pictures to the “Good Morning America” studios of Horton’s creation that year — a family of bright-yellow Minions from the “Despicable Me” and “Minions” films.
In 2019, Horton garnered more national news coverage when photos started circulating of the 8-foot-tall eagle snow sculpture he designed that year, garnering more than 2 million likes and new followers from around the world.
Horton made his first snow sculpture in 1997, just a couple years after moving into his home on the well-traveled South State Street. An artist at heart, Horton wanted to make a fun and unique snowman to entertain people driving by.
What he came up with was a tall bust of Homer Simpson, but it was hard to see the details intricately carved into the snow. Horton sprayed on some watered-down, water-based yellow paint to bring the visage to life, and passersby went wild.
“People loved it. I was getting comments on it even during the summer, so I thought I’d do something next year,” Horton said.
And so the yearly tradition began, except for a few years when the weather didn’t cooperate.
The snow sculptures are a good artistic outlet for Horton, who says he’s always had artistic skills. He’s designed his own bass guitars, model planes and fishing lures, and has restored his 19th-century Victorian home by hand, right down to the gingerbread trim.
While he loves creating them, Horton limits his snow sculptures to one a year. “I don’t want it to be overkill. I want it to be special,” he said.
The second year he built a sculpture, Horton started out making a domestic cat that turned out to be a sphinx. The year after that, he created a giant bass fish to commemorate his dad, an avid fisherman.
A few years later, after gaining a lot more experience, he created a big bluegill snow sculpture that he said was much better and more intricately designed than the bass he created for his dad.
Horton takes his craft seriously, and has even created his own tools for snow sculpting, similar to tools used to carve clay. “I have a machete knife that I do a lot of shaping with on the big stuff,” he said.
Although it takes hours to complete each sculpture, Horton says it’s a labor of love.
When the chill outside gets to be too much, he heads inside for about 20 minutes to warm up before getting back to work on his sculpture. “I don’t want to lose the momentum. I want to stay at it and get it done,” he said.
Most of his sculptures start with an idea followed by a sketch, although his Baby Yoda started out with him creating a miniature version of the face out of clay.
“I knew it wouldn’t look good if I didn’t get the face just right,” he said.
Horton put a lot of thought into finding just the right shade of green paint to bring Baby Yoda to life.
“I didn’t want to just grab green or light green, I wanted to grab something that looked the closest to the character,” he said.
Based on the feedback on his Facebook page, the Star Wars-inspired sculpture is a big hit.
