The Quicksilver Gondola, the link between the two sides of Park City Mountain, is spinning.
And riders will notice something new on one of the cabins: a painting by local artist Lamont Joseph White. The work is called “UPLIFTED”: a four-panel mountainscape with three Black skiers and riders foregrounded.
“To help create a new norm,” White said. “And new norm for me is just more diversity, a normalization of diversity in spaces like skiing and winter sports where you might not see as much of it. I like to promote that in my art, have those conversations.”
The original painting is hanging in the dining room at the Miners Camp lodge.
It’s similar in style to paintings in White’s “Skiing in Color” series, which features Black people and historical Black icons in ski gear.
“A lot of my work that I've done has sort of been like an amalgamation of images that I've captured myself or collected,” White said. “In this case, two of the people on the gondola are real people, and one is just an amalgamation, something that I created.”
To White, the wider “mountain culture” is made better when other types of culture are brought to it and included in it.
Skier of 60 years Mike Schmidt, who lives in Kamas, agrees. One of the biggest things, he says, is how cost-prohibitive winter sports can be.
“Skiing needs to be more diverse. It's a fabulous sport,” he said. “Diversity is always a good thing, so I'm very supportive.”
Park City’s gondola art is part of a series Vail Resorts commissioned for the 2023-2024 ski season. Paraplegic artist Jim Harris created a gondola wrap for Stowe, Vt.
And artists from two nations indigenous to the land where Whistler Blackcomb is located—the Squamish and Lil'wat nations—and are creating gondola wraps too.
The art by Levi Nelson, Chepximiya Siyam' Janice George and Skwetsimeltxw Willard “Buddy” Joseph will debut in the spring.
Back at Park City, with Quicksilver open, Canyons is spinning the Iron Mountain Express and Timberline so riders are able to access it. On the Mountain Village side, the gondola picks up at the bottom of Silverlode by Miners Camp.
