Maritime art studio, Orem, Utah
Skipjack Arts LLC is a working studio at 299 W 1380 N, Orem - 84057-6516, United States (US), where a skipjack is treated less as a subject and more as a rigging problem worth solving in paint. We draw the standing rig first, then let the canvas decide how the water should behave. Read how a commission moves through the yard
The six working lines
Skipjack Arts LLC keeps six working lines open at the Orem yard, and each one is a different way of looking at the same hull. We never begin a painting until the rig has been measured, because the geometry of a working skipjack tells the story that a photograph almost always flattens.
A single hull, measured at the dock and then rebuilt brush by brush in the studio. The portrait keeps working details that owners remember and that museums forget, from the tarred standing rig to the scar where a drum once sat.
Portraits are painted on stretched linen at two working sizes, and every commission arrives with a rigging sheet that documents the vessel as it stood on the day of the survey.
Line drawings of halyards, shrouds and peak lifts, printed in small runs on heavy cotton rag. A rigging study is the quietest thing we make and the most often pinned above a workbench.
Each print carries the mast plan at true proportion, with every fitting called out by its working name so a reader can follow the standing rig without guessing.
The sail cloth series treats weathered canvas as its own landscape. We stretch offcuts across frames and paint the memory of a belly, a leech and a roach until the cloth reads like water.
Pieces in the series move together as a set, hung in ruled rows, and each one is signed on the reverse of the frame rather than on the face.
Once a season the studio clears the benches and spends a full week painting one harbor from a fixed vantage. The result is a run of small studies that share light and weather but never repeat.
Harbor scene weeks are open to visitors by appointment, and the studies leave the yard as a numbered sequence rather than as individual pictures.
When a study deserves to travel, we assemble a print run: proofs pulled, edges trimmed, sheets signed and collated into a numbered stack. The assembly is part craft and part bookkeeping.
Every run is capped at a stated number, documented in the studio register, and closed for good once the last sheet is pulled from the press.
Several times a year the yard opens its deck to the public. Visitors watch a mast being stepped in miniature, handle a rigging model, and see how a portrait is blocked in before detail arrives.
Open deck days are free, family friendly and unhurried, and they exist so that the working method of Skipjack Arts LLC stays visible rather than hidden behind a closed studio door.
The winter print run opens in the last week of November, when the rigging study plates are re-inked and the harbor scene studies from the autumn week are collated into one numbered stack for the year.
Inside the rigging yard
The Orem studio is arranged as a small rigging yard rather than a gallery. A measuring bench runs the long wall, a mast stand holds the reference models, and the painting deck sits under north light so that the water never lies about its own color.
A skipjack is a working hull, and a working hull is defined by its rig. When Skipjack Arts LLC begins a portrait, the first afternoon is spent with a tape and a notebook rather than a brush, recording where every stay lands and how the mast rakes when the boat is loaded. That survey becomes the armature of the painting, and it is the reason a finished portrait can be read from across a room by someone who has actually sailed the boat.
We have found that color is the easy part. Anyone can mix a convincing sky. What takes time is the relationship between the peak halyard, the throat and the way canvas slackens when the wind drops. Our rigging study prints exist because that relationship deserves to be drawn plainly, without the distraction of weather.
The measuring bench is the spine of the yard. It holds a rigging model at one third scale, a set of cast bronze fittings used as weights, and a ledger where every commission is described in plain language before any paint is mixed. Owners are welcome to add notes to that ledger, and many do. A portrait is a collaboration, but it is a collaboration with a method, not a negotiation over shade cards.
From the bench, a commission moves to the painting deck for blocking, then to the sail cloth racks if it belongs to that series, and finally to the packing table where the rigging sheet, the frame corner and the printed notes are assembled into one parcel.
The six working lines are not separate businesses. A harbor scene week often produces the studies that later become a print run assembly, and a commissioned portrait may borrow a sail cloth study as a background texture. That is deliberate. The yard thinks in sequences, and a collector who owns one piece from Skipjack Arts LLC can usually trace it back to two or three others made in the same season.
We publish those connections in the studio register, and we are always happy to walk a visitor through them on an open deck day or during a scheduled studio consultation.
Linen is stretched by hand, sized twice, and primed with a warm ground so that the water never reads cold by accident. Prints are pulled on cotton rag with a press that has been in the yard longer than most of our clients have been sailing. We keep the materials simple on purpose, because a small palette handled carefully tells more about a working boat than a wide one handled quickly.
Nothing in the studio is rushed to a deadline that would damage the work. When a commission needs more drying time than planned, the studio writes to the owner and explains why, and the winter print run moves accordingly.
Working notes
Spring is for surveys and sail cloth studies, when the light is even and the harbor is quiet enough to measure without interruption. Summer belongs to commissioned boat portraits, because owners are on the water and can meet the studio at the dock. Autumn brings the harbor scene week, and winter closes the year with the print run assemblies that carry the season out into the world.
If you are considering a commission, the best time to contact the yard is late winter or early spring, when the measuring bench has room and the schedule can be planned without haste. The studio answers every inquiry from its Orem address, and the same phone line serves the deck and the office.