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S TA N L E Y • FA I R F I E L D • S H O S H O N E • P I C A B O
STUDENT SPOTLIGHT
Spirit In Motion Heats Up
PAGE 4
SUN VALLEY FILM FEST PAGE 5 READ ABOUT IT ON PAGE 3
THE WAY I SEE IT PAGE 16
M a r c h 1 2 , 2 0 1 4 • V o l . 7 • N o . 1 2 • w w w .T h e W e e k l y S u n . c o m
Art At Your FeetManhole Covers Get Culture
adicoff Has A Bright Future
STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
Denise DeCoster has hung her watercolors on many a wall. But never has she seen her artwork grace a manhole cover. That changed Thursday afternoon as the Hailey woman slid a hundred-pound cast-iron manhole cover depicting her sketch of a downhill skier over a hole in the middle of the street at Fifth and East Avenue in Ketchum. “It feels great,” said DeCoster, who was inspired by her love of running gates. “Originally, I did the design for commemorative coins celebrating Ketchum. But manhole covers are better than coins any day. Everyone gets to see these.” DeCoster’s design and five others celebrating Ketchum’s heritage were picked for the commemorative coin series. But funding for the project dried up when the recession hit in 2008 and 2009. Ketchum’s Utilities Department and the Ketchum Arts Commission decided to use the illustrations for decorative manhole covers after public art consultant Jack Mackie showed city leaders ways street benches, fences and other public utilities could show pizzazz along with function. City workers are placing 80 covers depicting four of the designs around the city, said Robyn Mattison, Ketchum’s new public works director. It plans to cast two other designs for an additional 40 covers later. “The expensive part is making the mold. Once it’s made each cover costs about the same as other covers,” she said, adding that she didn’t recall the exact cost. Ketchum Mayor Nina Jonas praised the project, adding that the country of Colombia had cleaned up its political environment by installing art in its plazas and other public sites. She pointed to outgoing administrator Gary Marks’ cover, which features a treble clef sign representing performing arts and a paintbrush and swath of paint representing the visual arts. “I’m particularly excited about this piece because it’s an art piece,” she said. In addition to the two designs already installed, Noah Bowen and Adam Marks designed “Prospect!”—a picture of a miner
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Jake Adicoff’s room sports posters featuring some of the heroes of Nordic skiing, including Sun Valley’s own Morgan Arritola, Nicole DeYong, Mikey Sinnott and Collin Rodgers. STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
M
embers of Sun Valley’s Nordic team held their breath as Jake Adicoff emerged from the
doctor’s. “I passed! I’m blind enough!” he said. “Way to be blind, dude!” the group of youngsters erupted, slapping his hand with high fives. It was an ironic moment—normally, blindness isn’t something to be celebrated. But the doctor’s determination meant that Adicoff’s sight impairment was severe enough to qualify him to compete for a spot on the U.S. Paralympic team. Passing the sight-impairment test was the hard part. Qualifying for the team on the basis of his ski racing ability was the easy part. Jake Adicoff has turned in some impressive cross-country performances,
despite vision impairments that resemble macular degeneration. He placed 30th among 625 competitors in the 2014 Boulder Mountain Tour, racing nearly 20 miles in an hour and 25 minutes. He qualified for Junior Nationals twice. And he has had some top 10 results in Paralympic World Cup skiing this past year. This week Adicoff is competing at the 2014 Winter Paralympic games in Sochi, Russia. Former Sun Valley Nordic racer Reid Pletcher is guiding him, skiing a slight distance ahead. “What’s impressive about Jake is that he doesn’t seem for one minute to define himself by his physical abilities. He’s always ready for the next challenge,” said Rick Kapala, head coach for the Sun Valley Nordic team. Adicoff, a 2013 Wood River High School graduate, is a man of few words— Wood River Ability Program coach Marc Mast says he can count on one hand the
number of words Adicoff said when Mast spent five hours escorting him to Park City for a race at Soldier Hollow. “But he has a bright future as a Nordic racer,” added Mast. Adicoff’s eyes were scarred before he was born when his mother contracted chicken pox during pregnancy. He has no depth perception—he can’t see out of the center of his eyes. When he’s skiing, he moves his head back and forth and side to side to get the full picture of the race course. He can bike but he can’t drive. He uses a laptop computer with an enlarged screen. He reads with a magnifier. And, yes, he has been known to miss the finish line, once going into the lap lane parallel to the finish line. “I’ve learned I have to pay more attention to inspecting the course before I start my race,” Jake said in between
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FOUR
UNFORGETTABLE DAYS CELEBRATING THE ART
OF FILMMAKING JOIN US MARCH 13 -16 2014 presented by
Photo courtesy of Sun Valley Resort
s unvalleyfilmf es tival.org