Ravay Snow says that she's been an artist and a writer for her whole life.
In elementary school, she gained notoriety as one of the two kids who
were really known for being able to draw. (It was a small school.) The
other kid was her brother.
In high school, Ravay honed her art skills as an award-winning cartoonist
and journalist, editing both her high school newspaper and the yearbook.
She also designed a number of sets for the drama department and published
her art in many extracurricular publications.
Despite doing all these things, Ravay really wanted to be a fashion designer.
She didn't know that she had terrible fashion sense. And who cared about
her really, really bad grades in 9th grade Home Ec.? (She swears
that the sewing machine got a life of its own and attacked her machine
embroidery assignment.) So Ravay kept on drawing improbable fashions during
trigonometry class, when she should have been studying.
Against all odds, Ravay graduated with good grades and went off to Virginia
to study fine art and English literature at the College
of William and Mary. Through a number of twists of fate that are too
complicated to go into here, somehow she got totally fascinated in Celtic
art, medieval architecture and medieval literature. This led to a sojourn
at the University
of St. Andrews in Scotland,where Ravay studied Gothic architecture,
learned how to read Anglo-Saxon, and got very adept at dodging stray golf
balls from the Old
Course, which was just down the street.
Aha! You are wondering what St. Andrews has to do with anything! Well,
in addition to having a lot of ruined castles and cathedrals and a gorgeous
view of the beach where "Chariots of Fire" was filmed, St. Andrews
(and, indeed, a lot of Scotland) has something else in huge abundance.
Sheep.
Not realizing the tremendous influence that Scotland would have on her
future creative output, Ravay returned to the United States and finished
her degree there. In art, she specialized in watercolor, but the whole
sheep motif had not yet emerged. However, in her final year at William
and Mary, Ravay illustrated her first book, "Chesapeake Bay Country,"
published by the Donning Company.
No sheep in that work, either, but she did do some stunning pen-and-inks
of opossums and other wildlife indigenous to the area (bunnies, herons,and
a whole bunch of ducks).
Over the next 18 years, Ravay worked on a number of writing and art-related
projects. Some of the more interesting ones included managing an art gallery
in the Washington, D.C. area and editing a book on the artist Pang
Tseng-Ying, teaching high-school writing, and starting a stained-glass
studio. However, she did not formally venture into the art/publishing
fields until 2002. That was the year that Ravay's desire to be a fashion
designer came together with her aesthetic appreciation for sheep. The
result was Hildegarde and the Great Green Shirt
Factory and the formation of Snowbound Press.
On the way to forming a publishing company, Ravay took a detour into the
world of education and research. She taught high school English. She has
worked extensively as an education policy researcher. And she earned her
Master's and Ph.D. from the
University of Colorado. Over the past twelve years, she has written
a number of scholarly and policy articles, drawing on her expertise in
accountability, standards and test-based reform, and school change. But
that's another story.
To see selections from Ravay's illustration portfolio, please click here.
Call at (303) 434-4960 or (303)
347-2869 to place an order for
“ Hildegarde and the Great Green Shirt Factory”!!!
Or e-mail us:
Ravay Snow says that she's been an artist and a writer for her whole life.
In elementary school, she gained notoriety as one of the two kids who
were really known for being able to draw. (It was a small school.) The
other kid was her brother.