In the curious world of Jeff Beck – a graphic designer by day and an up-and-coming toy artist the rest of the time – toys are never toys. They’re works of art.
“They’re just like a canvas you would display as art,” says Beck, a 36-year-old High Point native who recently moved to Greensboro. “They’re definitely not made to be played with. Most people collect them as pieces of artwork.”
Beck, who uses vinyl and resins to create a menagerie of odd-looking, sometimes even grotesque, creatures, will be one of the featured artists in “Land of Misfits,” an upcoming designer toy exhibition being held at the Center for Visual Artists in Greensboro.
“I went to the gallery with the idea of doing a custom toy exhibit,” Beck says. “A lot of local artists have been sending in custom toys and paintings. Some have sent in stuffed animals and puppets, but they all have a custom-designed toy theme.”
Artists from outside North Carolina, including one from Argentina, have also submitted custom toys for the show, he adds.
Beck, who will have more than 20 original creations featured in the exhibit, joined the custom toy craze a couple of years ago.
“I was doing graphic design, but I was getting a little burned out on that,” he recalls. “I just wanted something new and creative to do, so I started painting on canvas. That kind of led into me finding this group of people who were customizing vinyl toys, and it was something that really interested me.”
Beck – who describes his style as “lowbrow art” – works primarily with vinyl and resins to create his collectible creatures.
“With the vinyl, you get these blank white vinyl toys and use that as your base,” he says, explaining that he orders the blank toys online. “And what I do is get some clay and sculpt over it and make it into the design that I want, or I’ll just paint straight onto the white vinyl toy.”
“I hand-sculpt an original design myself,” he says, “and then I take it and make a silicone mold of that sculpture, and I put the resin in so I can make multiple copies of my toys.”
Because it’s not uncommon for him to be working with toxic chemicals, Beck often wears a gas mask when he’s creating in his studio.
“Usually when I’m spray-painting or making the resin toys,” he says. “The resin is not highly toxic, but it’s good to wear some kind of protection.”
Although the custom toy market is in its infancy in this part of the country, it’s huge on the West Coast and in the New York area, according to Beck. He hopes to boost the popularity of custom toys in the Triad – the Greensboro exhibition should help, he points out – but in the meantime, he’s found a market online by setting up a website and by being featured in blogs about custom toys.
“A big part of what I do is commissions, designing pieces for people based on what they tell me they want,” Beck says. “I’ve even had people in Germany commission me to do pieces for them. I’m starting to get more recognized, and people are finding out about me.”
After a largely snowless spring and a too-long summer, skiers and snowboarders are getting back on their gear and out on Maine's slopes. Maine's two largest resorts -- Sugarloaf and Sunday River -- are open now, and nearly all of the state's other areas plan on opening in the next few weeks.
Like a handful of other passionate skiers and riders, I make a point of getting out on the hill as soon at the lifts start turning. It's always an interesting mix of folks on the slopes during these early days. It's the most hardcore of skiing passionistas: racers from around Maine and New Hampshire resorts like Wildcat and Attitash; college students from UMF, Bates and Colby; long-time skiers at Sugarloaf; and ski bums in the classic mold.
There's hardly a person on the hill who isn't an expert. Skiing and snowboarding have always been communal sports, but it never feels as much like one happy family as when it's just these passionate souls who've been eyeing their equipment since August.
Conditions are objectively worse in the early season than at the height of winter, but you couldn't tell that by looking at the people on the mountain. Whenever I was tempted to grumble about firm packed powder or a lack of skiable acres, there were plenty of people ready to remind me that a bad day skiing beats a good day doing anything else.
Lifties at both mountains were in similarly high spirits, happy to be back on the hill. One at Sunday River was even giving out high-five tips. (If you want to be sure to make contact, look at the other person's elbow instead of their palm.)
Early season skiing does present some unique challenges. There is, of course, the hard packed boilerplate snow -- familiar to any New Englander, but particularly noticeable when every skier on the hill is going down a handful of trails. Blasting snowguns, crucial as they are, create artificial blizzards to test riders. The first few times out are also hard mechanically, inasmuch as it takes a few days to get your snow legs back under you.
Mother Nature also gives us less sunlight for skiing. We're nearing the shortest days of the year, and the sun disappears before 5. At Sugarloaf and Sunday River, the sun slips behind the summit well before it dips below the horizon. Thankfully, most skiers' legs will also have a tough time making it to last chair this early in the season.
Still, some things feel just like midseason. If you're riding up the Locke Mountain Triple, it still rattles like a train car just after the midstation. Java Joe's still pumps out enough coffee to get a contact caffeine buzz walking by. These familiar bits and pieces tell us what brings the few hardy souls to the mountains early in the season. Opening day might fall a few weeks after homecoming weekend, but it still feels a lot like coming home.
Even if the slopes aren't packed shoulder to shoulder, there's no doubt that it's a point of Maine pride to get people skiing as early as possible. Sunday River was the first Maine ski area to open, on Nov. 6. Sugarloaf wasn't far behind. The Carrabassett Valley resort opened for skiing and riding on Nov. 9. It was the mountain's earliest opening day since 2007.
With an absence of any natural snow to speak of, these early openings have been possible due to expanded snowmaking capacity at both resorts. Sugarloaf's biggest snowmaking expansion in 20 years included 300 new guns on trails from Skidder to Tote Road, along with new snowmaking pipes and valve stations. A million-dollar investment at Sunday River, already notable for snowmaking mastery, added 300 snowguns to over a dozen of the most popular trails.
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