ND (AP) – Artist Guido van Helten, on top of a giant grain elevator in the middle of Minot, North Dakota, swipes through the concrete walls with a brush that is more suitable for drawing fences than making monumental murals.
The Van Hertenbrush front and back focused on his work, not bothered by the pure enormity of his work as he stood on a boom lift 75 feet (23 meters) from the ground, but focused on a few square feet of structures spanning most of the city block.
“If you use these older structures to share stories and use them as a means of carrying an image of identity, it becomes part of the landscape,” he said. “We found out that people really hired them and are really proud of them.”
The work on the old Union Silo is by Van Herten. Latest efforts to paint murals On a massive scale, there are previous projects on structures ranging from dams in Australia to parts of the old cooling tower at Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. He has created murals all over the world, but grain silos in the Midwest of the United States is one of his most frequent sites.
“I enjoy the opportunity to uncover stories that are often out of the way and are considered elevated communities,” he said.
Van Herten has been creating murals for many years and has been increasingly working in the United States over the past seven years and around the world. Native interest in the 38-year-old Brisbane-born local community began in earnest after a mural she created with 100 silos in an Australian town several years ago. He said, the new ideas were interesting, and he started a series of committees in Australia and the US.
He uses mineral silicate paints formulated to absorb and combine with concrete, which lasts a long time. He mixes the wall colours with intrinsic tones and blends in with subtle layering of the work.
“I love coloring these buildings so I don’t want to fight against them, I don’t want to change it, I don’t want to brighten it. I want it to be part of the landscape,” he said.
It’s not a quick process for Van Herten to first meet with residents to learn about the community, then spend the next few months slowly changing the largest structure in a small town. He began painting at Minot in May and planned a 360-degree mural that combined photography and painting to portray the people and culture of the area.
The Minot Elevator and Silo were built in the 1950s and were economic centres for years before operations were stopped around the early 1990s.
Van Herten doesn’t give too much about what his Minott murals portray, but he says he was inspired by the concept of land and ownership in North Dakota, from ranches and oil fields to Native American perspectives. Minot is a city with nearly 50,000 people and sits nearby Bakken Oil Field and Fort Bertholdt Indian Reservation.
“It’s really when the land and the different cultures got budding in it in many ways about how they interpret it and connect with it. It’s a really big, open land, so I think it’s really interesting,” the artist said.
Many of the murals are still in shape, but images of the barn and the woman can be seen.
Property owner Derek Hackett said the mural is “a great way to embrace a kind of ruined property and revive its presence in the facelift and skyline.”
He said soon the murals can be seen from almost anywhere in town.
The mural project has been fully donated and costs around $350,000, with about 85% of which already being raised, said Chelsea Greich, a spokesman for the project.
“It’s our unique thing, it’s a unique North Dakota and you won’t be able to find a piece like this anywhere else,” she said.
