NEW FAVORITE PERSON LEFT TO RIGHT “Last season Ben filmed his entire video part on-hill at Whistler-Blackcomb, BC. Having lift access means you can prep things in a different way. For this feature, Ben had gone up a few days before and shoveled the lip so when it snowed it was ready to go. It took a couple hours to line up how we wanted it to look, but we got the shot then proceeded to take pow laps for the rest of the day.” Photo: Ben Girardi Blue steel? Photo: Ben Girardi In 2017, Ben was three years into living seasonally in Whistler, spend-ing springs and summers riding park in the freestyle mecca and winters back home. That year, he answered a Craigslist ad posted by Whistler stone carver John Fathom. John needed someone to carve bulk quanti-ties of three-inch-tall Inukshuks, inventory for his gallery in a high-end Whistler hotel. Ben was offered a three-month probationary employ, to be spent carving basic, repetitive forms. He learned the fundamentals quickly and John brought him on full-time. Before long, the creative urges that had turned his family farm into a snowboard park began to surface. “The Inukshuks weren’t my design,” Ben says. “I hadn’t felt the spark I get from snowboarding yet—it was still more or less just a job.” The opportunity to push it further came with an offcut. “One of the senior artists at our studio was carving a life-sized polar bear out of a huge piece of marble—a 6,000-pound piece of stone—and as he was carving the base, he had to take off maybe a 350-pound section. The piece that broke off spoke to me—it put an image of a tree in my head. He gave me the piece and I started to carve ‘Chili Tree.’” With ‘Chili Tree,” Ben sought to encapsulate the radiant interpreta-tion of nature he saw in late Whistler artist Chili Thom’s paintings. As he worked, he felt his tools move more like his snowboard, exploring and expressing as they followed his creative impulses. Ben worked on the piece for months, falling in love with the process as he peeled away and shaped the stone. “You get lost, working for hours straight without drinking water or taking a break,” he says. The following summer, Ben picked up acrylics. He painted mountains and trees, confidently showing pieces and even live paint-ing within months of his first brushstrokes. “It came back to what I learned from ‘Selfiestickman,’ honestly,” Ben says. “It doesn’t have to be the hardest thing in the world, the most detailed or the best quality. It just has to be true, and it has to be you. And if I can make what’s in my head truthfully, it resonates.” Today, as Ben travels to ride—or stays at home, as he did this past winter, filming mostly on-hill at Whistler-Blackcomb for Home Hill — he sizes up the landscapes he encounters as if reading the natural con-tours of a stone. His riding is experimental, effervescent and focused on accenting what he finds in the mountains. His carving builds off “Chili Tree,” playing with the idiosyncrasies of different minerals with subtle shapes and textures. He paints on driftwood, canvas and skate-boards, sharing visions of the Coast Mountains with vivid color. Ben now works solely in art and snowboarding. He’s learned to move with the ebb and flow of sales and commissions and to utilize his social media presence to generate business. He donates partial pro-ceeds to organizations like Protect Our Winters and Black Lives Mat-ter. While an average piece sells for approximately $200 CAD, Ben’s gallery presence has also led to major sales as well— “Chili Tree” sold for $12,000 CAD. “My dad used to tell me you can only do one thing really well,” Ben says, looking forward. “I’ve decided to be the best I can at three. I’ve got my work cut out for me and I think there’s a lot of development to happen. I don’t think I’ve perfected my style yet, whatever that means, but I also believe it’s an ever-evolving journey. Maybe I’m not doing as many spins in the future, or carving the biggest piece of stone, but focusing on adding more character to it. Progression is an intersection, and there’s value in finding something different.” 106 THE SNOWBOARDER’S JOURNAL
The Snowboarder's Journal The Snowboarder's Journal 19.1: Page 106
