The Ski Journal - Volume 16, Issue 2
INNER CHILD: Geoff McFetridge’s Creative Way
Words: Noah Lederman. Art and Captions: Geoff McFetridge 2022-11-01 06:51:50
Double Sided Landscape, acrylic on canvas (2022)
There is a tiny figure in the opening to the cave and a single set of footprints. These prints could be the viewer’s as they walked into the cave and looked back to see the figure in the opening. But then again, this could be the omniscient viewer looking at the path the figure took out of the cave and into the light. The fact that both readings exist is what makes putting together simple images interesting to me.
Looking out across the endless gray of the Swiss Alps, snow-frosted and stoic, skiers at Laax were perplexed by the sign. It was shaped like a traditional blue square marker, the universal indicator of intermediate terrain, but in 2015 something about this one was different—it was a simple graphic of a skier bombing down an invisible 45-degree slope, a fork and knife for his skis pointed toward a mid-mountain restaurant. Another sign announced “powder,” featuring the curve of both a snowboard and a smile—two legs, two dots for eyes, both imaginary torso and face covered in a cloud of snow.
All across the mountain, simple surreal graphics brought skiers to a halt as people pondered the provocatively funny and undeniably informative indicators.
A black sign that read “halfpipe” showed omnipotent hands reaching down from above to remove the peak of a traditional mountain rendering, leaving behind a semicircular void in place of the triangular top. At Laax, skiers saw signs for twisted-up riders that had carved too quickly in the glades; for two hands and a head, and a body lost in deep and treacherous snow.
The ski-to-a-stop, illustration-style art was for Minis in the Mountains, a campaign for the tiny car company. But for Geoff McFetridge, it was also a chance to combine two of his many worlds on the same canvas. One of the most sought-after graphic designers in the world, McFetridge was 3 years old when he started skiing, beginning a lifelong love affair with adrenaline sports. From following childhood trail signs at Alberta’s Sunshine Village to making them for one of Switzerland’s premier resorts, there was some poetry to the Mini commission, but it didn’t end there. By 2020, K2 had proposed a new artist collaboration—a full spectrum of on-ski graphics—and McFetridge felt a strong pull back to the mountains, reconstructing his relationship with flying downhill along the way.
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