By ANGELO LYNN
WAITSFIELD — Sparky and Peggy Potter have lived ‘the dream’ as well as any two ski bums could.
It’s been a journey that saw them struggle as part-time ski patroller and local craftsperson, launch an enviable business in the mid-to-late 1970s shooting photographs of extreme skiing and winter events, and finally ending up in Waitsfied, Vt. with an award-winning firm making custom-crafted signs for some of the nation’s most prestigious ski resorts.
And, all the while, staying within a few minutes of the slopes just waiting for the next dump of six inches or more.
In the ski bum world, that’s darn close to heaven.
The skiing itch was firmly embedded in Sparky as a kid in the ’50s and ’60s whose New England-based parents frequented the Mad River Valley. By the time it came to choose a college, he opted for St. Lawrence University in upstate Canton, N.Y. — a drive from the slopes of Sugarbush and Mad River, but certainly doable. He majored in history and over the course of his four years there, met Peggy, who later majored in religion and philosophy. They fell in love and have been romantic partners since.
But their story was just about to get more involved.
Sparky, being a year or so older, headed off to Aspen and resorts out West with a friend. Practically penniless, they worked where they could, skied when they could, and eventually ended up hobbling back to the East coast and Vermont in 1971 “dirt poor,� as Sparky put it in a recent interview at his workshop, but ready to put his roots down in Waitsfield.
He got a gig as a ski patroller at Sugarbush that year and in his spare time started messing around with woodworking and making signs for the ski area.
“I came up with nothing really going for me, except a passion for Vermont,� said Sparky of those early years. “I didn’t even have a car for those first two years...�
By 1973, Peggy had graduated and moved to Waitsfield with Sparky. They had spent the past couple of summers waitressing and doing carpentry and painting houses in the valley to make ends meet, during which time Sparky and Peggy also started crafting custom-made signs under the name Wood & Wood. In 1975, they built a house together just up the hill from their current shop and started making signs in earnest. They carved a niche in the sign business by focusing, they said, “on a high degree of art and ‘Old World’ craftsmanship.�
But adventure soon got in the way of career.
Sparky had also been an avid photographer shooting ski action shots and putting those slides to music in an entertaining slide show. Peggy helped with the editing of the slides and putting them to music, dissolving the slides into graceful sequences, and two others — Charlie Brown and Irving Rushworth — soon joined the effort. They eventually formed Dream On Productions and entertained in such popular après ski bars as the Bluetooth in Warren and other hot spots of the day around the Valley and the region.
Then they hooked up with Vermont-native and adventure traveler Ned Gillette (and later Stowe resident and fellow adventurer Jan Reynolds) and began producing films and slide shows for him to music, which they marketed into a business that had them traveling across the country ‘entertaining’ at major ski resorts, cities and even a few prestigious gigs with Princess Hotels and Norwegian Cruise Lines.
As those early years went by, Dream On Productions became a hot commodity. They were signed up by Camel cigarettes (RJ Reynolds company) to cover the world speed-skiing competitions in Silverton, Colorado — a thrilling spectacle that made for “great photos� and filming, Sparky recalled, as well as a certain amount of fame in the niche world of extreme skiing. They ended up being the visual end for RJ Reynolds and covered the speed-skiing event for three seasons, watching one of the skiers break the 130-mph record.
By the 1980 Olympics, Sparky, Peggy and team, were signed up to film the games and had contacts to cover different events with several firms, spending three and a half weeks in Lake Placid. They ended up covering that most famous U.S.-Soviet hockey game (the American ‘dream team’), put the photos to music in a slide show and, as luck would have it, were selected to tour with the U.S. hockey team for two weeks after their gold-medal Olympic performance — showing their slide show to high acclaim wherever they went.
“It was so much fun,� Sparky recalled, “so much fun.�
Fame begets success and ski manufacturers K-2, Elan and Spaulding hired them at different times to do photographic stills and music visuals.
For ski bums photographing the sport (and other winter sports, plus some summer/ocean-related gigs in Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard) they loved to do, they were on fire and flying high.
Amazingly, in the midst of all this, Sparky and Peggy and Wood & Wood signs were also crafting custom-made signs for Coca Cola and ABC for events at the Olympics, as well as other jobs that came their way.
And then came Charlotte, their now 27-year-old daughter, and the first of three children.
Life on the road and away from their Waitsfield home soon came to end in the early 1980s and they settled into a new lifestyle.
“It all started trying to take pictures of shooting skiing ... then that started spinning into everything,� Sparky said, “through the visuals as well as the signs.�
It was, it turns out, a natural progression. Back in St. Lawrence University, Sparky would grab piles of scrap wood and start carving, sometimes imitating album covers, he said. “Architectural elements just wow me,� he said, recalling that he taught himself how to carve and how to paint via his experiences as a painter of houses during the summers of his college years. Throughout it all, his penchant for “just inventing things� was pervasive.
He became “addicted to doing things in public spaces,� and he and Peggy, also an artist, hit the craft show circuit for a while, though never leaving their budding custom-sign business, which had evolved from their early efforts at fabricating wood tables, doors and interior/exterior decorative home accents.
“The art work (involved in making signs) is the main motivation,� Sparky says of what has always been at the heart of his work and of his return to making custom signs for the past 37 years. “I realized art can be anything in three dimensions. Art is the balance, the scale of things… (but art) is also the impulse more than the structure of things…. There has to be some degree of personality that goes beyond bland; you’ve got to make it memorable.�
That love of art has translated into a successful career and numerous awards as a mountain resort designer of wayfinding sign systems. The Sparky Potter Design Group, and Wood & Wood Sign Systems, have crafted signs for the recently built five-star Stowe Mountain Lodge at Spruce Peak for which they won first class honors in the Commercial Monument Sign Category at the 2006 International Sign Expo, as well as top ten honors for an entry monument sign for Moonlight Basin Resort in Big Sky, Mt.
The company has been hired by nearly every resort in Vermont for their signs, including Okemo’s Jackson Gore development, Mount Snow, Killington, Pico, Bolton Valley and Burke to name a handful, plus resorts across the country such as The Canyons in Utah; Steamboat Springs and Beaver Creek in Colorado; Taos in New Mexico, Sunday River in Maine, Loon Mountain and Waterville Valley in New Hampshire and many others.
But the ski resort business is only a fraction of what Wood & Wood covers. They also provide signs for corporations, colleges, municipalities, entertainment venues, retail stores, restaurants and inns, museums, and even music venues such as previous Phish concerts. A sampling of those clients includes Busch Gardens, Sea World and Universal Studios in Florida; South Street Seaport in New York City; signs for residential communities like Farmington Place in Ct., or the Mill at Little Falls, N.J.; the Shelburne Museum in Vermont; and corporations — local and national — such as Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters.
“What really excites me,� Sparky said of his work with custom signs, “is teaming up with people� to develop the creative idea and fit the need. “You never know where it’s going to go.�
In all, over the years, Sparky and his crew of 10 full-time employees have earned 60 national and industry design awards.
Much of the early work was produced out of their homestead on Mad Ellen Road, which is perched on a hillside above Route 100 near the Big Picture theater. There the Potters built and designed an enclave of small hobbit-like (or German-influenced) structures, one of which is their home and the others have been workshops for their combined businesses.
The buildings have a medieval charm inspired by J.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings — a triology of books, along with The Hobbit, that Sparky says he has read almost a dozen times — an influence easily seen in his work.
Wood & Wood recently moved its operations down the road to its current location on Carroll Road.
While Sparky and Peggy worked on Wood & Wood together in the early years, Peggy also started her own workshop and business in 1990 called Casa Madera. In a shop adjacent to their home, she has hand-painted the distinctive wooden bowls that are well known throughout New England, among several Hollywood celebrities and craft centers throughout the country. A cottage industry, she has long employed three additional production artists to meet demand.
A consistent customer for years has been actress Whoopie Goldberg, who bought as many as 90 bowls in a single holiday season as gifts for friends. Peggy has also been a familiar face at craft shows and Waitsfield’s farmer’s market, selling her bowls for years to locals and visitors alike.
That production, however, may cease soon as the manufacturer of the wooden bowls in Granville has closed its facility and Peggy has decided to phase out of the business that produced about 2,000 bowls annually — all hand-painted with a process developed over 25 years of experience.
What’s not told in this story, of course, is far more than what’s mentioned here.
Sparky is still a fanatic skier. Their daughter Charlotte is an artist specializing in glassblowing, while their other daughter, Grace, is a well-known musical rock-star with her band known as Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. A younger son helps with the business, while some form of creativity (art, music, architecture, structure) seemingly permeates every aspect of the family’s lives.
Sparky and Peggy, and the business, even teamed up with American Flatbread to run FREE ART for three summers at Phish concerts a few years back, providing thousands of attendees a chance to get back into art while listening to great music — a fitting crusade for a couple of musically-attuned ski bums raised of age in the late ’60s and ’70s.
And while their journey is far from over, it’s been a wild and wonderful ride so far — both will tell you — if there ever was one, and it all started with a passion for skiing and a place called Vermont.