Treasure Mountain students had the opportunity to design top sheets for skis for three-time freestyle Olympian Devin Logan. The project was the brainchild of digital media and photoshop teacher Meagan Chartier.
“I was really interested in finding something that would spark a little bit of kind of new creative energy with the kids looking for something interesting and out of the box," she said. "I thought of skis. And I had a nice family connection to Devin. And I reached out to her and asked if she would be interested in being a part of the project. She gave a resounding yes, in whatever capacity we needed her to be. So she became kind of a judge in this competition.”
Chartier applied for a Park City Education Foundation grant which allowed her to bring in David Habben, a local designer. He visited the classroom and spent two days with students talking about what it’s like working with a client like Logan and how to design for her, which got the creative process going.
Vivian Bagley was one of the finalists. She said working with Habben was enlightening.
“He brought to light a lot of points that I hadn't really considered before. In the experience of working with a client and such there's a lot of back and forth conversations that I didn't really know were a part of it.”
Logan sent the students a two-minute video explaining her background and the types of designs she was interested in.
There were 170 submissions from the eighth and ninth grade classes. Logan chose the top 35 and then narrowed it down to five and then finally the winner.
Grace Gladson won first place in the competition. She said Logan’s home state was the inspiration for her winning design.
“My design is like a fall horse with a lot of leaves falling and a den of foxes," Gladson said. "This design was inspired by the way that Devon said she grew up in Vermont. And when I think of Vermont, I think of like autumn and orange colors.”
Oslo Elliott was one of the finalists. He was also motivated by the forests in Vermont.
“So my design is of a large glass tree of syrup. The main focus of it is this frog or the frying pan in his hand. There's a lot of mushrooms below him. And it's about perspective from the ground floor all the way up to the top of the tree.”
Eli Olson is another finalist. His love for Japanese art inspired his design of a Japanese house and cherry blossom trees.
“I did mine on the computer and a lot of the other designers did it on paper," Olson said. "But when I just first started just doing little sketches on paper, and then I transferred it to the computer and designed it on the computer.”
Chartier said she’s currently looking for a ski company to work with to produce Gladson’s winning design onto skis.
