The chair we got wrong

After our ArtWalk wall at Torchlight Brewing in the summer of 2023, the brewery asked if we'd come back for the holidays. We said yes, with one honest caveat: we weren't sure we'd have enough new work to fill the whole room. So we agreed to aim for half of it, and on November 29 we carried the pieces in and hung them.

One of the new pieces was a tall panel we'd been working on through the autumn. It started with a photo looking up at the chairs at Whitewater, then layered a topographic map of the terrain behind them, so the lift towers and chairs sit right over the contour lines and run names. We called it "The Glory Chair."

Someone who knows the hill

About ten days into the show, a visitor got in touch to ask about the piece. A few emails later they passed along a friendly correction from someone with a connection to Whitewater. The chair in the photo, they said, was the Summit chair, running up over Glory terrain. Not the Glory chair at all.

They were right. Gregg had taken the photo while hiking up the Summit side, so of course it was that chair. His reply was mostly a laugh at himself:

"I will update the design with the Summit map behind it in the next iteration and will make sure to not title it 'The Glory Chair' any more."

Gregg also sent thanks for the sharp eyes, along with a request to keep it secret so our reputation stayed intact. We're now breaking that secrecy ourselves.

Fixing the map

The fix was more than a new title. The whole point of the piece is that the map behind the chairs matches the ground under them, so the map had to move to the Summit side too. We started reworking the design straight away.

The chairs stayed where they were. Behind them, the runs and contour lines now belong to the right lift. These days the piece goes by the name it should have had from the start: Summit Chairs.

What the show gave us

When we took the work down on February 7, we told the brewery the truth: we didn't sell much that time around, but we got a lot of compliments and good feedback. They told us they'd be happy to have us back.

The correction is the part we remember best. People here know these mountains by heart, down to which chair runs over which terrain. When someone takes the time to tell us we've got it wrong, it means the map matters to them, and that's the whole reason we make this work.

It's also why we like to hear from the people who know a place before a custom piece is finished. If there's a lift, a trail or a run you know better than anyone, start a design and tell us what we should get right.