Author: Colorado Springs Gazette
In 2015, Rad Smith nervously emailed James Niehues.“What do I have to lose?” Smith recalled thinking.“He may or may not get back to me.”Over three decades, Niehues had become famous as the painter behind ski area maps in Colorado and around the world.The blue sky, the white powder, the trees and their shadows on the shimmering slopes — the hand-applied details had become synonymous with the resort industry, as iconic as names like Whistler Blackcomb, Vail, Park City and Jackson Hole.In 2015, amid his 25-year career as an illustrator, Smith had read interviews in which Niehues, “the Michelangelo of snow,” suggested he would be retiring soon.Smith’s nerves were well-founded: Niehues over the years had politely dismissed such inquiries about his work and business.“I was pretty protective because, you know, I really felt that the industry couldn’t really support two artists,” Niehues said from his home in Parker.“I tried not to discourage, but at the same hand, I didn’t do a lot to encourage them either.”Of Bozeman, Mont., Smith seemed genuine. He provided samples of paintings that looked good to Niehues.Above all, the man’s timing was good.After James Niehues’ retirement, Rad Smith is proudly carrying on the hand-painted tradition of ski maps.Photo courtesy Rad Smith“I could see in a few more years I would be dropping out of it,” Niehues said.And the tradition, he knew, had to continue on.So it is under the stranger who became an apprentice.After years of steady referrals from Niehues and tutelage under the master, this ski season will mark Smith’s big splash on the Colorado scene.Keystone Resort commissioned Smith for the map depicting its highly anticipated, lift-served expansion into Bergman Bowl.Aspen Mountain is also debuting terrain called Hero’s, the mountain’s most significant expansion since the 1980s.In a video posted to social media, Aspen Skiing Co.praised Smith for bringing the terrain to life. Smith recognized “big shoes to fill” in the video, in which he spoke of honoring the old ways of the art.Rad Smith sketching slopes of Aspen, in the early process of painting a map of Aspen Mountain’s new Hero’s terrain.“That hand-rendered trail map brings out the beauty of a place,” he said.“You would be taking something away from that natural beauty by creating something on the computer.”Computer generation was never a consideration, Aspen Skiing Co.’s Lauren Myatt told The Gazette.“There are many reasons to do that, but our brand ethos are to be authentic and artful,” she said.“And nothing is more authentic than a hand-drawn ski map.”Smith’s map joins others kept by Aspen: Niehues painted the one for Highlands, while Snowmass and Buttermilk are from Bill Brown in 1984.Brown was the keeper of the flame before Niehues.Not so unlike Smith, Niehues reached out to Brown in the late ‘80s as an artist looking for work.Niehues became the third to take up the ski mapping brush.Stay in the know on the stories that affect you the most.He traces the beginning to Hal Shelton in the ‘60s, Vail’s early days.“He was an avid skier,” Niehues said. “The story goes, that I’ve heard anyway, is that he approached Vail wanting a forever pass, and he would paint the ski area for them.”Painting was indeed still the way of illustration by the time Niehues got busy.It wasn’t long before computer illustration hit the mainstream.The technology posed a more efficient and cheaper way to create maps.“I lost quite a few jobs because people felt like this was the new way,” Niehues said.“Pretty soon they came back.”They came back for the truths he held dear.Painting, he felt, was “more free in style” and “more representative of nature.” A computer program would simply clone a tree, when in reality individual trees were the individual, intricate work of nature.The hand and the whims of a brush mimicked that in a way. The hand was true to other details: a mountain’s craggy ridges, its rise and drops, the way light and shadow played all around.Overall, the computer product was off in ways Niehues always struggled to explain — in ways it is similarly hard to explain the very soul of skiing.James Niehues works in his home studio in Parker in 2018.Niehues has come to be known as “The Michaelanglo of Snow.” Courtesy photo“Once you get off that lift, it’s exploration as well as a thrill, just you out in nature,” he said.“I’ve always felt the computer-generated image is a reflection of the office and work.It’s not a true representation of the feeling that you get up on the mountain.”Smith admits: He had computer illustration in mind for the maps.That would be in building upon the digital skills the graphic design industry demanded of him through the ‘90s and into the new century.With the ski maps, Smith came to think otherwise. “That was a humbling thought process,” he said.And so he relished a return to his preferred, childhood mediums: pencil and watercolor.Before sketching and then painting, Smith has also come to adopt Niehues’ pre-art process: collecting blueprints and other available documents from resorts and taking aerial pictures for reference from a helicopter.(Sometimes Smith opts for a drone.)It’s all rather surreal for Smith, who came to admire Niehues’ maps while briefly living in Boulder in the late ‘90s.Smith was early into his career then, figuring out how to blend his dual loves of nature and art.Graphic design for the Boulder-based sportswear brand Spyder made sense before years consulting with biologists, environmentalists and land managers on maps and various projects.In college, Smith majored in graphic design and fine art.“Graphic design felt like a safer path,” he said.“I wasn’t brave enough to think I could make a living as a fine artist.”Now here he is painting ski maps — fine art indeed.“I’m just trying to keep the path beaten down that (Niehues) forged and his predecessors too,” Smith said.“If I can just keep the path going, that would be a success in my mind.”
