BY KAREN BOSSICK

Ryan Bonilla lives just five minutes from Big Snow American Dream where “every day is a snow day.”

So when, Courtney Gilbert and Jennifer Wells Green were curating the new Snow Show: Winter Now exhibition for the Sun Valley Museum of Art, they turned to the young photographer for a photographic essay and documentary of North America’s first indoor ski dome.

“I feel like it’s a glimpse into the future of winter sports if climate change continues,” said Bonilla, a multimedia artist born in the Philippines. “It’s what the future is going to be like when it comes to snow sports because of the warming environment.”

Ryan Bonilla says he has been influenced by the art, skate, street and fashion culture of downtown New York City. His work has been featured in Elle, Playboy, GQ, showcased at Art Basel and collected by the Museum of Art and Design.

Snow Show, designed to dovetail with the 2025 Audi FIS World Cup Finals being held in Sun Valley in late March, examines the past, present and future of winter and snow sports through the lens of photography and video art kicks off with an Opening Celebration from 6 to 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 24, at SVMoA, Fifth and Washington streets in Ketchum.

“Winter sports are an integral part of Sun Valley’s identity,” said Gilbert, assistant director of SVMoA. “Through these remarkable works, we hope to deepen the conversation around winter’s cultural and environmental significance and its past, present, and future, while celebrating the diversity of perspectives in snow sport art.”

Bonilla’s “Welcome to the Fridge” features 300-plus photographs made with a Fujifilm Instax camera. The polaroid photographs features young snowboarders mid-air against the backdrop of the Big Snow American Dream’s industrial infrastructure.

The year-round indoor ski resort, which blows snow every day in its 28-degree facility, opened in 2019 next to the New York Jets and Giants stadium in Rutherford, N.J.

Ryan Bonilla’s work often captures the rawness and innocence lost in our age and society.

It features a four-passenger chairlift about the length of Half-Dollar on Sun Valley’s Dollar Mountain and a Magic Carpet with a few rails and jumps. Lift tickets start at $49.95 for two hours—if you bring your own skis.

“I ski there every day when I’m back East,” said Bonilla, who traveled the world as a sponsored snowboarder and skateboarder before transitioning to art and fashion, working with such fashion houses as Tommy Hilfiger, Burberry and David Yurman.

“You’re inside so it’s very different than skiing Baldy. It’s very industrial because you’re in a giant warehouse—you’re inside riding underneath lights so that’s interesting. But I can ski every day, even in the summertime so it’s a good way to keep the legs in shape. I treat it like my gym—my own little training facility.”

Bonilla says he tends to take photos that document his life, what’s going on around him or what he thinks is cool.

Ryan Bonilla says his work is intended to represent the feeling, culture and freedom of his lifestyle.

In addition to his art, he is doing an artist’s talk and a workshop on snow sports videography for kids at Rotarun Ski Area.

He and his wife also painted snowboards with skeletons for the exhibition.

“My wife and I are both Latinx so the graphics complement that. They’re inspired by Dia de los Muertos with the women holding flowers. I’m a very avid snowboarder so it’s my way of saying thanks--thanks for the life and the lifestyle.”

Snow Show: Winter Now, which runs through April 2, also features the work of Catherine Opie, Bob Reynolds, Mungo Thomson and Sofia Jaramillo.

This picture gives viewers an idea what it’s like skiing and boarding inside a warehouse.

+ Catherine Opie has explored a wide range of subjects throughout her career, including the architecture of Los Angeles freeways, California surfers and abstract landscapes of national parks. Her work in this exhibition depicts photographs of Norwegian mountains, which she describes as “portraits of mountains—studies in the color blue.”

For her the blue is a reflection of collective mourning, a response to the transformations the planet is undergoing.

+ Bob Reynolds’ short film, “The Word for Weather is Knowledge,” explores the ever-shifting contours of the massive Jakobshavn Icefjord as billions of gallons of meltwater pour into the ocean from the Greenland ice sheet. In Inuktitut, Reynold points out, the word for weather, knowledge and spirt are the same—“sila.”

His large-scale painting “A Fragile Absolute (after Bradford)” was inspired by the 19th century painter William Bradford, whose paintings during eight Arctic expeditions during the 1860s documented a polar landscape vastly different from the one Reynolds encountered a century and a half later.

+ Mungo Thomson’s “Wall Calendars” lightboxes begin with commercial calendar images of well-known mountains.  He then reproduces them at a large scale as if held up to the sun, allowing the reverse side of the page to show through. By printing them on both sides of a sheet of fabric stretched over a light box, he imposes the calendar grid of a single month onto a photograph of a 40-million-year-old mountain setting the minutia of daily life into scale against geological time.

+ Sofia Jaramillo, a Colombian American visual artist who was born and raised in Sun Valley, has created a new work for this exhibition. Her “A New Winter” has recreated photographs from the 1930s and 1940s spotlighting people of color as she encourages broader representation in winter sports.

There are several special events being held in conjunction with Snow Show:

Thu, Jan 23

ARTIST TALK: Behind the Scenes—Sofía Jaramillo’s “A New Winter”

Sun Valley Opera House, 5:30pm

FREE, pre-registration recommended.

Join artist Sofía Jaramillo and members of her production team for a conversation moderated by Suzanne Donaldson, former Senior Director Global Brand Creative Production at Nike. Learn about the behind-the-scenes production work that goes into Jaramillo’s photo shoots for “A New Winter”.

Made possible by Sun Valley Resort.

Fri, Jan 24

SVMOA Member Preview & Exhibition Tour

The Museum, 5–6pm

FREE to Members

The Museum’s curators invite SVMoA Members for a preview and exhibition tour of SNOW SHOW: Winter Now prior to the Opening Celebration.

Opening Celebration

The Museum, 6–7pm

FREE! Open to the community.

Fri, Feb 7 

ARTIST TALK: Rob Reynolds

Location TBA, 5:30pm

FREE, pre-registration recommended.

Join Los Angeles-based artist Rob Reynolds for a talk about his work in painting, sculpture, video, sound, and augmented reality (AR). Reynolds will discuss his ongoing project, A Fragile Absolute, which emerges from extensive travels with earth scientists in the Arctic, and the making of his film The Word for Weather is Knowledge, filmed in Greenland in the summer of 2019.

Thu, Feb 27

ART CLUB: Conversations on Contemporary Art – Memory in the Work of Sofía Jaramillo and Rob Reynolds

The Museum, 5:30–6:30pm

FREE to members / $15 nonmembers

Join SVMoA for a series of conversations on Contemporary Art. At the February Art Club, we’ll discuss the different ways that artists Sofía Jaramillo and Rob Reynolds use memory, nostalgia, and change through time in their respective bodies of work.

Sat, Mar 1

TEEN WORKSHOP: Snow Sport 

Photography with Sofía Jaramillo

Rotarun, 11am-3pm

$20, pre-registration recommended, space is limited.

Middle and high school skiers and snowboarders are invited to join National Geographic photographer Sofía Jaramillo for a photography workshop focused on snow sports. Learn techniques for capturing the best photographs of skiers and snowboarders in action. The workshop will begin with an hour of instruction in the Rotarun Lodge before heading out onto the hill to practice photography techniques. Rotarun day passes will be provided.

Thu, Mar 6

ARTIST TALK: Catherine Opie

Location TBA, 5:30pm

FREE, pre-registration recommended, space is limited.

Join renowned Los Angeles-based photographer Catherine Opie for a conversation about her most recent project, portraits of mountains shot in Norway in the winter of 2024.

Sat, Mar 8 & Sun, Mar 9

TEEN WORKSHOP: Snow Sport Video with Ryan Bonilla

Sat, Rotarun, 12-3pm; Sun, Hailey Classroom, 10am–12pm

$20, pre-registration recommended, space is limited

Middle and high school skiers and snowboarders are invited to join artist, designer, and Burton NYC Ambassador Ryan Bonilla for a day of video instruction on the mountain. Ryan will share tips for capturing the best footage possible of skiers and snowboarders in action. On Day 2 of the workshop, students will learn the basics for editing footage and creating standalone videos. Open to all Middle and High School students, no video experience required. Rotarun day passes will be provided.

Wed, Mar 19

ARTIST TALK: Into the Archives with Sofía Jaramillo

The Community Library, Ketchum, 5:30pm

Presented by SVMoA, The Community Library, and Ochi Gallery

FREE, pre-registration recommended.

Join Sofía Jaramillo and staff from the Community Library for a conversation on the way that Jaramillo found inspiration in the Library’s archives, and the historic artifacts the Library and Wood River Museum of History and Culture made available for use in her project.

Thu, Mar 20

APRÈS ARTIST TALK: Ryan Bonilla

The Museum, 4:30pm

FREE, pre-registration recommended.

Join artist, designer, and Burton NYC Ambassador Ryan Bonilla for a conversation about his practice and his installation for Snow Show, Welcome to the Fridge, which includes hand-painted snowboards and hundreds of Polaroid photographs made at an indoor ski and snowboard hill in northern New Jersey.

Thu, Mar 27

ART CLUB: Conversations on Contemporary Art – Deep Time in the Work of Brad Johnson, Catherine Opie, and Mungo Thomson

The Museum, 5:30–6:30pm

FREE to members / $15 nonmembers

Join SVMoA for a series of conversations on Contemporary Art. At the March Art Club, we’ll discuss the different ways that artists Brad Johnson, Catherine Opie, and Mungo Thomson approach the idea of deep time in their practices.