From Sawdust to Sketchings

Park City is now home to the Spiro Artist-in-Residence program located at the Silver Star Resort, a luxury condominium complex at the edge of Park City Mountain Resort, adjacent to the newly restored mine buildings there.

One of 250 artist-in-residence programs dotted around the country, Spiro Arts offers a haven for artists who want to concentrate intensively on their work. Last April and May, five visual artists, a poet and a novelist were the first to spend a month living at Silver Star and working on anything our mountain environment inspired them to do.

Rory Murphy and Chris Connabee, principals in Paladin Development Partners, which created the resort, wanted the Artist-in-Residence program to be an integral part of Silver Star. A portion of homeowner dues supports the studio building, University of Utah lectures and Arts-Kids summer camps, artist-in-residence stipends, summer art workshops, and life drawing sessions.

The 2,200-square-foot studio building originally housed a sawmill for hewing the support timbers of a massive mine drainage tunnel. Miner Solon Spiro dreamed he would find silver ore while building that tunnel, but he went bankrupt in 1912. The Spiro Tunnel still carries his name. In 1964, the sawmill became the terminal for the “Skier Subway,” a narrow gauge railroad that transported skiers through the Spiro Tunnel to a “hoist” that elevated them straight up to the Thaynes chairlift at then-Park City Ski Area. Today the historic building is occupied by the Sundance Institute in fall and winter and the Spiro Arts studio in the spring and summer. “The idea germinated when city councilor Peg Bodell asked the question, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to turn the historic building into an art space?’” said Murphy.

“I didn’t know it would be wintertime!” exclaimed Santa Fe artist Patricia Kourdas when she arrived last April for her residency. (Neither did veteran Parkites who continue to talk about the record snowfall last year). “It was a good time to try introspection,” Kourdas said in a Park City Television profile on You Tube. Comparing Kourdas’ Southwest landscapes with work produced here shows how transformative her Park City sojourn was.

“Our jury looks for artists who have some understanding of how Park City’s special environment will feed their work,” explained Executive Director Kathryn Stedman.

Spiro Arts also offers scholarships to community residents who want to take one of the five-day summer workshops. Year-round life drawing sessions are free, with donations encouraged. “We want Spiro Arts to become an asset that is used by the community and not looked on as an ivory tower kind of place,” explained founder Rory Murphy.

Spiro Arts life drawing sessions attract working artists and curious dabblers. There is no instructor; participants bring their own materials. Light, shadow and line are transformed into vastly different interpretations of the human form, depending on how the artist sees the model.

One can’t help but wonder — Did Solon Spiro ever dream that his sawmill would become home to such an inspiring place?

Lola Beatlebrox is the author of “Your History Your County,” a children’s history of Summit County published by the Summit County Historical Society.

Applications to the Spiro Artist-in-Residence program may be made at spiroarts.org. The juried selection process takes place in February. A description of summer workshops, lectures, artist profiles, and events can also be found online.