“I walked into my first [art school] 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.

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