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STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK Ben Steele has never been to Sun Valley’s historic Roundhouse Restaurant, which sits on the edge of a snow-covered slope halfway up Bald Mountain. But he feels like he knows this iconic landmark, which has hosted such luminaries as the Shah of Iran and Ernest Hemingway. After all, the artist from Helper, Utah, spent weeks recreating the restaurant and superimposing it with a gumball machine in a colorful painting that now hangs in the Gilman Contemporary Gallery on Sun Valley Road.
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Ben Steele says he is toying with other ways of painting Sun Valley’s iconic red barn.
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“I’ve loved his work for a long time—his playfulness in conjunction with precision and references to art history. And I was so happy when he said he wanted to paint some Sun Valley pieces,” said Gallery Owner L’Anne Gilman. Gilman is featuring several of Steele’s works depicting Sun Valley landmark in an exhibition titled “A Day in the Sun.” Steele says he uses iconic images like Sun Valley’s Roundhouse and the Sun Valley Barn as a point of connection to draw viewers into his paintings. “Anyone who’s been to Sun Valley knows the red Sun Valley barn so well,” he said.
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“Sun Valley Ski Inn” provides a colorful take on Bald Mountain.
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Steel and his wife, who grew up in Idaho Falls in the heart of potato country, brainstormed up to 15 ideas for the Sun Valley series, picking the ones that resonated most. In the barn’s case, he covered it with a picture of Marilyn Monroe wearing her famous burlap potato sack and an advertisement for potato vodka to reference Idaho’s potato culture. “I wanted it to be a winter scene, and vodka feels clear and cold,” he said. In painting “Sun Valley Ski Inn” with Bald Mountain in the background, Steele drew from three different pictures of the mountain, taking the foreground of one and the lighting of another. “I want to do more paintings of Sun Valley. I want to do the barn again in a different way,” he said.
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These three crayon paintings each offer different takes on “A Day in the Sun.”
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Born in Kennewick, Wash., Steele got a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting and drawing at the University of Utah in 2003. The 48-year-old artist has been living and working in the small coal and railroad town of Helper, Utah, population 2,200, for about 20 years--ever since taking part in an internship with David Dorman, a former University of Utah art professor, at the Helper Workshops. He has his own studio, complete with an art sauna that quick-dries oil paintings in its 85-degree heat. “Helper was named after the engines that pushed trains up the mountain. And I love it because it has a feel of Americana and open space, which offers inspiration,” he said. “My teacher said, ‘If you move to New York to become an artist, you work three jobs to pay for your apartment and you don’t have time for your art. Live cheap, like you can in Helper, and let your career get going.’ ”
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This Etch a Sketch titled “Sketching Sunflowers” features a fiberglass frame
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Steele took him at his word, and soon developed a reputation for mixing and matching pop culture or Old Masters art history, employing tricks like leaning crayons against Warhol soup cans, as he tried to create a conversation between the old and the new. He’s put Marilyn Monroe on a mustard bottle, Elvis on Kingz Ketchup and Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” on a PEZ dispenser. He’s etched a Rembrandt self-portrait on an Etch A Sketch and painted a Sundance Coffee can with Robert Redford on it next to a coffee cup and coffee beans against the backdrop of mountains surrounding Sundance. He’s also painted ski legend Stein Erickson, who performed backflips for Sun Valley skiers while teaching skiing on Bald Mountain. Steele has no compunction about imitating the work of others, taking a line from Salvador Dali who famously said that those who do not want to imitate anything produce nothing. And he says he has learned much from utilizing works by the Masters to the extent he does.
“Van Gogh is about brushstrokes but even more about energy. To get Vermeer right, you have to have very soft edges. He’s asking difficult questions and trying to answer them. I love changing styles as it helps me keep me engaged and interested,” he said. What he does is working. His work is owned by actor Steve Carell, Shark Tank panel member Robert Herjavec, sportscaster Dan Patrick, Zions Bank Art Collection and in the San Franciso Giants Executive Office. It can be found in Delta Airline Sky Club lounges throughout the United States and in galleries in such towns as Salt Lake City, Palm Desert. Park City and, of course, Ketchum. His current exhibition at Gilman Contemporary will run through April 28.
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