Printmaker Jim Harris puts a special spin on Stowe’s wheelchair-accessible cabin

Harris said his “Creating Your Line” work is an invitation for people of all abilities to choose their own adventures. (Vail Resorts)

The skilled artwork of printmaker and skier Jim Harris — inspired by his love for mountainous terrain and honed during the years following an accident that left him paralyzed — is turning heads at Stowe Mountain Resort, where it is being displayed this season on the handicap-accessible SkyRide gondola car that whisks skiers to the top of Mount Mansfield.  

Harris said his “Creating Your Line” work is an invitation for people of all abilities to choose their own adventures. The installation is part of Vail’s Gondola Gallery by Epic project, a collaboration with select artists to custom-wrap gondola cars at a handful of its resorts into one-of-a-kind works of art that support welcoming and inclusive themes.

“My hope is that the gondola sparks curiosity toward discovering something new and welcoming in a familiar place,” Harris said during a phone interview from his Carbondale, Colo., home. “Any way that we can invite more people in, I think is a positive change.”

Harris found inspiration for the topographic contour lines etched in his Stowe work from aerial imagery of Mount Mansfield. “I tried to capture the rolling terrain, the complexity of the terrain,” he said. “There are so many nooks and crannies and little valleys. It’s very convoluted, mountainous terrain both inbounds and in the surrounding area.”

He created the print by carving the reverse image of the Mount Mansfield landscape into a wood panel, coating the surface in ink, and passing the panel through a hand-cranked printing press, which transfers the ink from the surface of the wood onto the paper. 

Harris said he’s always felt connected with the mountains, and he hopes his artwork is helping others to connect. For a decade prior to his accident, he worked as a mountain guide and camera operator on expeditions around the world, regularly logging 100-plus ski days year after year. A kite-skiing accident in Patagonia in 2014 left him paralyzed below the waist. Suddenly, his world changed.

In the years since the accident, Harris’s recovery to becoming a walking paraplegic has been improbable. Following spinal fusion surgery, he regained some motion, starting in a single toe and later with the activation of leg muscles. He progressed from wheelchair to walker to cane, and is now enjoying skiing again, though not with the same physicality he once possessed.

“I always had a really keen eye for landscape, whether that was finding good skiing or setting up skiing shots,” Harris said. “So, post-accident, some of that translated into this art and with this ‘Creating Your Line’ piece in particular.”

Harris said he learned about the opportunity for the Gondola Gallery project through his work with the High Fives Foundation, a Truckee, Calif.-based nonprofit that does philanthropy work with the disabled community and with adaptive athletes across the country. High Fives, which has a strong contingency in Vermont, recommended Harris be included as a featured artist. 

He visited with the Vail Resorts marketing team at Stowe over the course of several days last season to film promotional segments for the project and to ski. The visit happened to line up with great weather. “We had some storm days, and I met up with a bunch of sit-skiers and the High Fives crew,” he said. “It was a really warm welcome, really phenomenal for my first time skiing in Vermont.”

While he hasn’t been back to Stowe yet to view the finished installation in-person, Harris said that he has been thinking a lot about seeing this unique artistic medium in service, carrying passengers of all sorts to the top of Stowe.

“It’s a format that I don’t have prior experience with,” he said. “The goal was to make something eye-catching, something visually interesting, something that’s going to turn heads while people are in the maze waiting to get on a gondola car.”

Stowe’s ADA-accessible gondola car — which is physically bigger than the other cars to accommodate wheelchairs and adaptive apparatus — has been a favorite among locals and ski schoolers who consider it a “lucky car” to board with its generous size and floor-to-ceiling windows.

“There’s really a fun, artsy metaphor for being able to look through the windows, through this image into the actual real life landscape behind it,” Harris said. “It’s kind of like looking through this lens of art into the actual, real-life scenery.”

Harris sees his work as an invitation for people of all abilities to create their own lines on the mountain. “For people with disabilities,” he said, “there’s a lot less opportunity to get out and have a choose-your-own-adventure connection to a place. Any way that we can invite some more people in, I think is a positive change. Maybe it will be a visual nudge that there are other options, other flavors, other varieties that exist to a broader cross-section of humanity.”

Harris’ “Creating Your Line” artwork is available on posters, postcards and additional merchandise on sale throughout Stowe’s retail shops. Check out more of Harris’ work at gorgeousstorm.com.