Meet the Minnesota artist honoring Vikings careers — one helmet at a time

Shane Anderson has created custom retirement tributes for C.J. Ham, Anthony Barr and Adam Thielen. He already has ideas for Harrison Smith’s, whenever that day comes.

Longtime Vikings safety and current free agent Harrison Smith will retire at some point.

When he does, one of the team’s most meaningful traditions will follow: a custom-painted helmet by Twin Cities artist Shane Anderson.

The gift from the team hasn’t been commissioned yet, but Anderson — a lifelong Vikings fan who has already created retirement helmets for C.J. Ham, Anthony Barr and Adam Thielen — has been imagining what Smith’s might look like.

“I know it’s on the table whenever he does [retire],” Anderson told the Minnesota Star Tribune. “Honestly, he’s like my favorite player in the last 20 years, so I’m hoping he doesn’t retire. But when he does, it’s going to be an absolute honor.”

Anderson’s work is displayed across the Twin Cities, from nonprofits to restaurants. His Vikings partnership began in 2022 and has already led to hundreds of painted Vikings cleats, over a dozen helmets and a mural inside U.S. Bank Stadium.

Anderson was commissioned to paint during a welcoming event for the 2022 NCAA Women’s Final Four in Minneapolis. Tanya Dreesen, then a marketing executive with the Vikings, saw his painting and had a simple question.

“She’s like, ‘Why don’t we have any of your work in the stadium?’” Anderson recalled.

Well, because Anderson was out of town when the Vikings hired a firm, Sports and the Arts, to decorate the stadium with local artwork.

U.S. Bank Stadium opened in 2016 with over 300 paintings, drawings, sculptures and other pieces commissioned through local artists — including Vikings legends Carl Eller and Jim Marshall. The artwork decorates the hallways, suites and concourses at the stadium, where the Vikings later asked Anderson to paint a mural.

Anderson, who grew up in Inver Grove Heights, created the “Sota Skol Skyline,” a painting of the Minneapolis skyline reflected on U.S. Bank Stadium overlaid with odes to the team’s history: caricatures of Bud Grant and Fran Tarkenton, Stefon Diggs’ Minneapolis Miracle catch and a nod the Metrodome, among others.

The Vikings liked the mural so much they keep coming to him for work.

“’I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this is my dream,’ right?” Anderson said.

Lifelong Minnesota Vikings fan

Anderson has been a diehard Vikings fan since his family moved to Minnesota when he was entering kindergarten. He lived through the painful moments that fans know simply by the years they happened: 1998, 2009, etc.

“I grew up through the heartache,” Anderson said. “My favorite season still to this day is ’98, and it’s also my least favorite season. I was like 19 years old or something like that and I remember crying.”

But Anderson, who has been a professional artist since 2007, said he really won over the team with his assignment after the stadium mural.

“I had 10 days to paint 150 shoes,” Anderson said, “and it was over Thanksgiving.”

He recruited about 15 relatives and friends to help with the setup: stripping primer off the shoes, pulling laces and painting base layers. His nieces and nephews helped relace every shoe within the 10-day window.

“Everybody was like, ‘Holy crap, he actually did it,’” Anderson said. “That’s where it all started.”

Customized Vikings helmets

Some of Anderson’s favorite Vikings assignments are the customized helmets.

The Vikings commissioned Anderson to paint personalized helmets for outgoing employees and retiring players. Each opponent that has visited U.S. Bank Stadium in the past two years has also received a painted helmet symbolizing their city and team.

Fullback C.J. Ham has two customized helmets.

The first honored Ham’s back-to-back Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award nominations, a twist from the signed jersey the Vikings typically give honorees.

Ham pulled the helmet from the top shelf in his home office and looked it over while talking to the Minnesota Star Tribune over the phone.

One half is a standard Vikings paint job. The other half is a colorful montage that includes, among many other tributes, a stylized Vikings logo, the “C” from Ham’s jersey noting his team captaincy, a Gjallarhorn, a scroll depicting the Ham Family Scholarship fund and the logo for the Boys & Girls Club, where Ham spent many hours as a kid while his parents worked long hours.

“They have the statute that is at Augustana,” said Ham, a Duluth native and a graduate of Augustana University in Sioux Falls, S.D. “The clock tower from my high school. The lift bridge from Duluth. There’s so much fine detail.”

For the first helmets, the Vikings had Anderson send sketches for approval. He’s since been allowed a little creative license with the projects.

Like with Ham’s retirement helmet. The stylized side includes a portrait of Ham surrounded by his wife Stephanie and their three children Skylar, Stella and Cortez Ham III, who is wearing a No. 30 jersey that reads “Papa” on the back — Ham’s favorite part.

The team had proposed a different way to illustrate the Ham family, but Anderson said he pivoted based on a photo taken before Ham’s final Vikings game against the Packers.

“I didn’t ask permission,” Anderson said. “I’m going to put this on there and see what they think. It was a different approach than [the team] wanted me to take showing him and his family, but I absolutely love the way it turned out.”

So did the Ham family.

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