Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Stu MacKay-Smith - Fearless creativity lives here

"Play is what I do for a living. The work comes from organizing that play." - Anonymous Architect, A Whack On The Side Of The Head I've never met a more open, more imaginative person in my life. Or a more prolific artist. Really.

"Play is what I do for a living. The work comes from organizing that play."

- Anonymous Architect, A Whack On The Side Of The Head

I've never met a more open, more imaginative person in my life. Or a more prolific artist. Really. The guy works his tail off! Forget the usual clichés. His way of making art involves 100 per cent inspiration, 100 per cent perspiration. It isn't something he just does. Art is who he is.

Go ahead, Take a quick mouse-trip through his website if you don't believe me. From delicately drawn pen-and-ink studies to lusciously ladled paintings to hallucinogenic music videos and yes, thigh-slapping horror movies, Stu MacKay-Smith is the real thing. And yet I've never encountered a more humble, more unassuming, down-to-earth guy...

"I'm a product of my upbringing," he says with his marquee chuckle. "I had a wildly creative dad and a strong, disciplined mom. I guess I learned something from both." A pause. A breath. Another quick chuckle. "Maybe that's why I find it hard to take myself too seriously. Yes, for sure I work hard at it, but I have so much fun at what I do that I just can't consider it a 'real' job."

Indeed. The son of Peter and Winnie, the brother of artistic iconoclast Ace and e-game wunderkind Adam, the first-time papa-to-be grew up in a household where "normal" was nothing like the normal most other kids lived in mid-1970s Kamloops. Meaning? Dad's idea of a good time, sister Ace once told me, was helping the kids build a Hot Wheels super-track from the roof of the MacKay-Smith house all the way down into their garden.

Remember Hot Wheels? Remember those flexxy orange tracks that were hell to connect over long distances? Most kids back then thought that setting a track from the dining room table to the floor was extreme. But in the MacKay-Smith abode that just wasn't good enough. "My dad loved to push the envelope," Stu says. "He could turn just about any event into an adventure."

For many of us who were cutting our teeth in the ski business in the early 1970s, Tod Mountain's far-from-normal manager, Peter MacKay-Smith was something of a titan. Blessed with a child's imagination, a salesman's instinct for a great pitch and an unending supply of good-natured energy, MacKay-Smith père organized the kind of on-hill ski parties that his era would soon become famous for...

"It was all about mountain culture back then," adds Stu. "Being an 'outlaw-skier' in those days was like a badge of honour. I remember sneaking down to the Burfield Lodge with Ace and peeking thru the window of the Beer Stube as the adults swung from the chandeliers. Dad and his friends really taught us how to party."

As for his mom, Winnie, she's just as legendary. "My parents split up when we were still pretty young," he explains. "And for the first few years it was really tough. But Winnie held it all together. She was our rock."

Still, it was a painful time for the young family. "I guess that's when I really started to escape into my comic book world," says Stu. But not the same ol' American comics other kids were into. Au contraire . "I was more into the European stuff. You know, a little bit darker. A little bit more noir . And exquisitely crafted. Very technical. Very detailed. I'm sure it had a long lasting influence on me."

No question. As light as he is in person - as gentle and kind and easy-going as he appears to be - there's a thread of gothness that runs through his art that's both disturbing and enticing. There's a dark, heavy-metallish feel to what he does. His character studies are twisted. Angry. Limbs askew, facial features contorted. Anatomically correct of course - the guy has a discerning eye for the details of the human body. But just a little strange. Not quite appropriate for a family audience. "For sure," he agrees. "You're bang on." And laughs again. "I can't really explain it though.  It's just part of who I am. It's a way of purging my demons or something."

Cleanse or purging, expression or reflection, Stu's sinister stylings are mitigated by an unbridled sense of humour lingering just below the surface of everything he produces. "There's a lot of comedy there," he admits. Smiles haplessly. "It comes out even when I don't want it to..."

Which, I guess, explains his longtime association with the crazy guys who are putting on this week's tasteless, silly, irreverent, rude - and surprisingly fun - B-Grade Horror Fest. "The Heavyhitting gang - you know, Feet and Chili and Travis Tetreault and crew - they're like family, man. They're my true friends. We have a lot of fun working together." Another long pause. A sigh. A subtle shift of the shoulders. "We aren't making any money at it or anything," he says finally. "But that's not what's important ..."

His original Heavyhitting connection, he tells me, came with the shooting of the now cult classic Parental Advisory in 2001. "That's when I first partnered up with them," he recalls. "Feet and Travis had this idea to put an animated character in the film. I was the only one in Whistler doing animation at the time. So it kinda fell into my lap."

A lot happened that winter. And not all of it good. One of the gang's best friends, Brett Carlson, died while negotiating a dicey road-gap jump for the cameras. "That was truly horrible," says Stu. "But it kinda created a brotherly bond between us. You know, it became 'We gotta do this for Brett'." And they did. Among ski-film cognoscenti, the very dark (and very funny) Parental Advisory is considered a classic.

As for getting involved with the Horror Fest, he says, it was simply an extension of his burgeoning friendship with the crew. "Feet and Chili decided to launch a film fest because they wanted to make horror films themselves. So I decided to go along with their plans and make a couple of small films too." More laughter. "The first event was held at the GLC and it was pretty intimate. But the vibe was great."

The grand winner of two consecutive Horror Fests (in association with fellow artist, inamorata and madonna-to-be Pilar Alvarez), Stu was finally convinced to retire from competition and produce short intros for the festival instead. Ironically (and very fitting for this event), his intros are often better than the entries.

But I'm getting sidetracked...

Although Stu now lives in Vancouver's highly-textured Commercial Drive neighbourhood, his on-again, off-again love affair with Whistler spans nearly 20 years. As for his impact on the local arts scene, Mackay-Smith gets far too little credit. "I first moved to Whistler around '91 or '92," he recounts. "I'd just finished a treeplanting stint in the Interior and Ace was living at Whistler so I thought 'what the heck...'" Another round of laughter. "That was the beginning of it."

Turns out Ace had a friend, Jorge Alvarez (yes, brother of Pilar), who was looking for airbrush artists to work at his village shop. "Jorge owned a T-shirt store called Santini's and Goldfinger (Pete Malaschitz) and I were airbrushing cheesy stuff for the shop like 'And on the seventh day god went skiing...' It was pretty basic."

But airbrushing T-shirts for tourists wasn't going to hold the young artist for long. "After a six-month travelling stint through Europe and Asia," remembers Stu, "I returned to Whistler. By then we'd all realized that screenprinting was the next logical step. So Jorge and Rob Boyd bought a screenprinting machine and Sean Bondaroff joined the team as head of production."

And so Toad Hall was born. I know. I know. It's way more complicated than that. Buying the machine, finding the space. Getting it all right. It wasn't an overnight thing. Regardless - Toad Hall's boozy, smoky, psychedelic launch in Function Junction was the beginning of a new and distinctive art movement in Sea-to-Sky country. "Pete and I were pretty much the only guys doing the alternative art thing at Whistler," remembers Stu. "So we really felt like we were starting this little arts scene." He laughs. "It was definitely sub-culture stuff though. But I still think it had an impact."

As for the Horrorfest - now in its ninth appearance - what turns Stu on is its accessibility. "Plumber or mechanic, bartender or ski bum - it doesn't matter. What blows me away every year is how so many people work their asses off to make these stupid little movies. It's a melting pot of non-creators actually creating something." One last chortle. "It's like telling ghost stories around the campfire on a massive scale with a rowdy rock concert audience. If you're no good, you'll get boo'ed right off the stage. It's pure fun! It's not about making money. It's about fearless creativity..."

And that, he says, is what art should always be about. "The Horror Fest is all about rebel spirit," he explains. "What really excites me is that all those people in the crowd this year could be on stage next year with their own film. It's not about insiders. Anyone can create. Don't be scared."

The 9 th B-Grade Horror Fest will be held on Saturday, Oct. 30 at the Chateau Whistler. Check out Stu's website at www.smackaysmith.com