PLANWOOD.COM

WOLCOTT - Bill Mounsey lives in a trailer in a sheep field near Wolcott USA. His trailer, insulated with hay and barely, holds a bed and a TV. On a chilly September morning, a large fire beside the trailer kept him warm.

He is a self-proclaimed starving artist, and his works - chairs made of skis - sit around his outdoor workshop next to his trailer. He truly is an artist, he said, not simply a furniture maker. Skis, which are lined up around the trailer, are his brushstrokes, he said.

"I can't get it out of the mind," he said. "This is all I think about. This is how I'm wired."

His work is quite unconventional - he said he's the only person in the world who makes furniture completely out of skis - but fitting for Eagle County.

Mounsey, 33, has been making the chairs for more than a decade. You can find them scattered around the valley, at Shop 'N' Hop in Eagle-Vail, at Venture Sports in Avon and at Vail Ski Tech in Lionshead.

He has just come back from a two-year hiatus from building ski chairs. He was trying to find out if he was meant to do something else with his life, he said. He drove around the country, but came back to Eagle County to make ski chairs.

Now, he's redoubled his efforts, set up a Web site, and is trying to sell his creations for much more than they've been going for in the past.

Because he is the greatest ski artist in the world, he said.

"I'm the Van Gogh of ski furniture," he said.

Pursuit of the perfect ski chair
The chairs are made of nothing but skis and bolts. He gets old skis from a used-ski dropoff bin in Vail. He also buys olds skis - he recently picked up a few hundred at the annual rummage sale.

His designs assemble in his head, and he doesn't bother to write them down. He must consider the color of the skis that make up the chair. He must consider if the skis' shapes are appropriate. He must consider how comfortable the chair will be.

To make a single chair, he might use 18 pairs of skis, which he cuts with precise measurements. The result is a chair that's comfortable, sturdy and unique, he said.

"What you have is one of a kind," he said.

If all of the variables align correctly - the colors, the sizes, the cuts - he will get the perfect chair.

"Maybe one out of seven will be perfect," he said.

He also uses snowboards to make chairs, though he shies away from those designs - they are quite simplistic, he said. He also makes benches and sculptures out of skis.

He got the idea for ski chairs when he saw a chair in Vail that had a wood frame with skis attached. After experimenting with that type of chair, he discovered he could make chairs exclusively from skis.

A bird is meant to fly
His creations sell for hundreds and even thousands, and he's sold to people on the East Coast and in Australia. He's hoping to widen his market with his new Web site. As a bonus, his ski chairs can actually slide down a snowy slope.

He's hunkering down for a cold winter in his trailer, and he may have to escape for a month or so during the coldest month to more conventional shelter. But he will keep building ski chairs. As a bird is meant to fly, he said, this is what he's meant to do.

"I'm going to try it until the very end to be recognized as the world's greatest ski artist," he said.