Snow is white, right?

As I sit at my desk, looking out the window at Bancroft Bay, I am very tempted to pour myself a cup of coffee, sit back, and watch this morning’s natural world unfold.

It’s hard to concentrate on writing, when the squirrels are on the deck begging for more corn, the snow clumps are falling off the branches of the river birch, and the tan colored, dried grasses along the lakeshore are waving at me to come on outside and enjoy this beautiful day.

As I try to focus on writing this art column, the only phrase that comes to mind is “Snow is white, so what color is white?” The world outside this window is white, but you could never paint the picture using only white paint.

The sun is shining and casting soft blue shadows beyond every little ripple of snow and every twig. It is a most peaceful setting. Across the bay, the trees on the hillside of Bancroft Bay Park are all various shades of browns, and grays and tans, and above the tree line a row of pines offer a contrasting deep green. The gray- colored tree branches are each carrying a blanket of snow covering and the colors provide a horizontal line between the white snow on the bay and the white fluffy clouds in the soft blue sky.

A watercolor artist could paint this picture with only blues and tans and grays and very little of his paper would be left pure white — only the strips where he places the edges of the tracks left by yesterday’s snowmobilers. Every other space is tinted with faint coloring. There must be a million shades of white, from the brightest to the darkest, out there this morning.

Recently, my family and I had the opportunity to visit the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul to see the exhibit of artifacts found on the Titanic, the unsinkable ocean liner that hit an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on April 14, 1912, and sunk in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic at 2:20 a.m. on April 15.

We viewed the Omni Theater movie taken of the diving scenes as a very determined and brave crew penetrated the icy waters to bring to the surface some of the remaining artifacts from the ocean floor. The movie and the displays were fascinating.

The Titanic exhibit artifacts included things like dishes, broken chips and settings in perfect condition, a leather suitcase, a pair of man’s herringbone pattern pants, a lady’s dressing table setting of brush (minus the bristles), hand mirror (minus the glass), and comb, various navigational instruments (some broken and some in good condition), a huge piece of the rusted outer covering of the ship, and even books that had survived all of these years in the frigid waters.

There were room settings of an elegant first class suite and a simple third class room with bunks along the walls. A ship’s steward described to us the various accommodations on the ship, the costs per passenger classes, and the opportunities for dining and recreation depending on your status. He played the role perfectly — rather pompous and proud of his opportunity to work for some of the wealthiest people in the world. Little did he know that within hours he would be struggling to hang on to a wooden deck chair in 29-degree salt water floating amongst pieces of ice.

As I ponder the colors on Bancroft Bay, I can’t help but think that an artist would use almost the same colors to paint those scenes of the remaining hours of the Titanic before it settled down and plunged to its final nesting place on the bottom of the Atlantic. The shades of white would include the various whites on the iceberg and would be darker and more hazy, but the colors would be the same. Amazingly, the lights remained on the ship until minutes before it broke in two and plunged to the bottom, so this picture would contain spots of yellow — rows upon rows of windows protecting the elegance that was the Titanic. Then as the lights went out, the colors would become the grays and tans and blues of the same palette as the Bancroft Bay scene — just darker shades of the same colors.

Two totally different scenes and moods and stories, yet the same colors. Interesting.

Bev Jackson Cotter is a member of the Albert Lea Art Center, where the annual all-member show will be on display from Jan. 22 through February.