As we all recover from snowpocalypse 2011, nurse our wounds after battling for Bascom and sigh a collective groan that classes resume today, one Badger is celebrating the epic blizzard by partaking in a relatively new tradition on Lake Mendota: Snow furniture showcase.

This makes that snowman you built yesterday seem pretty dumb, right?

It was in 2009 when Hongtao Zhou began to experiment with snow as art, specifically furniture.

“I was researching design of furniture and trying lots of materials when I got the idea to use snow,” says Zhou, a TA for design and 3-D. “I wasn’t sure it was going to work, but it turned out to be okay.”

Although last year he created snow structures in Milwaukee, this year he brought the offbeat sculptures back to Madison.

As one might suspect, Zhou creates his snow furniture using materials found naturally on Lake Mendota – water, snow and wind. First, he drills a hole in the lake to get water and mixes snow with this water to make a snow-slush concrete mixture. He then puts snow on the ground of the lake and starts to shape it up by adding more and more of the concrete mixture.

When the structure is tall enough, he embarks on the hardest part of his snow furniture mission – creating the crossbars. Recently, it took him and his students around 24 hours to make 17 chairs.

“There is nothing man-made; it is all made from nature,” Zhou said. “When nature is angry, or against us, we can’t really work against it.”

Zhou said around 200 people hailing from the warmer regions of the country, from Florida to Hawaii, approached him within the last week while he was working on or around the furniture.

Though this may be Zhou’s last year at UW, he wants his snow furniture legacy to continue for future generations of Badgers to enjoy.

“I want to encourage more people to stop by and work on [the furniture,]” Zhou said, “It’s a pretty easy process.”

Zhou plans on making a poster with instructions on how to create snow furniture so anyone who would like to contribute to the project has the skills to do it. He said he’ll continue the entire project for about another 10 days and encourages anyone who would like to help to brave the cold and stop by.