When Reese Banke, 18, first decided to become an apprentice with Gerding Construction, he was hoping to be part of a big building project. In a way he is, but his role as a worker on the Elements Day Spa building project in downtown Corvallis is a little less exciting than he’d imagined.

Banke is the elevator operator onsite at the six-story building under construction just south of Washington Avenue and Second Street.

His job description: Escort workers and material up and down. Sometimes, he runs errands.

“It’s not my idea of what I want to be doing,” he admitted good naturedly.

But Banke has found a way to enliven a job that — if it isn’t exactly dead end — also isn’t going anywhere, either. He’s covered every available inch of the particle board interior of his movable work cubicle with his art. His favorite subjects: His fellow employees, whose faces are captured in caricatures. Each one is a dead ringer.

“I’ve drawn since I was a little kid,” Banke said. “My dad and my uncle are pretty artistic.”

The portraits Banke draws are exaggerated and cartoonish, but in a few strokes that take minutes, the sketches capture each subject’s personality as well as their physical characteristics. It takes Banke only a few minutes to study each person’s face on the elevator ride to the top of the building site and then sketch them during quiet times.

“Some people are just easy to remember,” he said.

Banke is considering attending the Art Institute in Portland, or the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. Until he decides, his job as an elevator operator allows him to get his foot in the door of construction work — as well as to hone his drawing skills — until he decides which career has the strongest call.

“I can always come back to this type of work,” he said, indicating the construction site.

His artistic work has become so popular that he’s now taking requests to add more detail. He obliges, and the result is a caricature that suddenly is holding a hockey stick or riding a horse, reflecting his subjects’ hobbies and interests.

One of his most unusual sketches is almost reminiscent of mid-20th century Mexican artist Frida Kahlo: It’s a portrait of a man’s head on a deer’s body. The drawing is of an engineer on the project, and was one of his “commissioned” pieces.

“They get pretty excited,” he said of his co-workers. “They say ‘I’ve finally made it on the wall!’”