The Lookout restaurant at Sundance Mountain Resort: dark timber facade with red-framed windows, folded umbrellas, and red Adirondack chairs on a snow-covered deck

Sundance, Utah

Sundance
Mountain Resort

Vintage ski photography from the resort's own archives, hung to feel as if it had always been there.

Sundance was founded in 1969 on the idea that art, nature, and community belong in the same place, and the resort still carries that spirit. For the art program, it meant work that belonged to the mountain rather than decorating it. In the model room, small, considered pieces, a trout watercolor by the window, a woven basket on the timber wall, a pair of line drawings in the kitchen, were selected to settle quietly into the design and feel personal at the scale of a single stay.

At The Lookout, the resort's restaurant, the walls carry the story forward. Working alongside Fettle Design, we built a gallery wall of vintage ski photography, skiers on the old lifts, snowcats, cabins in deep snow, drawn from the resort's own historical archives to hold the vibrancy and community the mountain has offered so many since those first seasons. It is the essence of the property made visible: not an idea of a ski lodge, but this one, remembered. Framed against the cedar planking, the pieces read as though they had always been there.

This project was completed during Michelle's tenure at Sweeney Co. Art Advisors, where she led the art program.

Interior DesignFettle Design
PhotographyMeagan Larsen
Year2021
Scope
Curation & Placement01Sourcing & Acquisitions02Commission Development & Management03Framing04Installation Oversight05
Sundance model guest room: a framed trout watercolor beside the window, log wall, mustard headboard, and a striped wool blanket on the bed
Model room kitchen with a pair of framed black-and-white line drawings of vessels beside the window, red cabinets, and an antler chandelier
Woven black-and-white basket hung as wall art on timber planking beside a leather chair, lamp, and marble table in the model room
Detail of a framed vintage photograph of an aerial skier above a crowd in orange, hung beside a bolted timber post at The Lookout
Gallery wall of framed vintage ski photographs on cedar planking above teal banquette seating at The Lookout, with a red cabin in snow at center
Installing the gallery wall at The Lookout: framed vintage ski photographs going up on cedar planking above teal banquettes