MINOT, N.D. (AP) — High atop a massive grain elevator in the middle of Minot, North Dakota, artist Guido van Helten swipes a concrete wall with a brush that looks more appropriate for painting a fence than creating a monumental mural.
Back and forth van Helten brushes, focused on his work and not bothered by the sheer enormity of his task as he stands in a boom lift, 75 feet (23 meters) off the ground, and focused on a few square feet of a structure that stretches over most of a city block.
“When you use these old structures to kinda share stories and use them as a vehicle to carry an image of identity, it becomes part of the landscape,” he said. “I’ve found that people have really adopted them and become really super proud of them.”
The work on the former Union Silos is van Helten’s latest effort to paint murals on a gigantic scale, with earlier projects on structures ranging from a dam in Australia to part of a former cooling tower at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine. Although he has created murals throughout the world, grain silos in the U.S. Midwest have been among his most frequent sites.
“I do enjoy the opportunity to uncover stories that are often kinda considered out of the way or flyover communities,” he said.
Van Helten has been creating murals for years, working increasingly in the U.S. over the past seven years and around the world. The 38-year-old Brisbane native’s interest in regional communities began in earnest after a mural he created years ago on a silo in an Australian town of 100 people. The new idea, he said, drew interest, and he began a series of commissions around Australia and the U.S.
He uses a mineral silicate paint formulated to absorb and bond with concrete, and it lasts a long time. He mixes tones specific to the color of the wall and subtly layers the work so it blends in.
“I love the coloring of these buildings, so I don’t want to fight with them, I don’t want to change it, I don’t want it to be bright. I want it to become part of the landscape,” he said.
It’s not a quick process, as van Helten initially meets with residents to learn about a community and then spends months slowly transforming what is usually the largest structure in a small town. He began painting in Minot in May with plans for a 360-degree mural that combines photography with painting to depict the people and culture of an area.
The Minot elevator and silos were built in the 1950s and were an economic center for years before they ceased operations around the early 1990s.
Van Helten isn’t giving too much away about what his Minot mural will depict, but said he has been inspired by concepts of land and ownership while in North Dakota, from ranching and the oil field to Native American perspectives. Minot is a city of nearly 50,000 people and sits near the Bakken oil field and Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.
“It is really when you boil down to it in many ways about land and how different cultures interpret that and connect with it, and I feel it’s really interesting in North Dakota because it is really such a big, open land,” the artist said.
Much of the mural is still taking shape, but images of a barn and female figures are visible.
Property owner Derek Hackett said the mural is “a great way to take what is kind of a blighted property and be able to give it a facelift and kind of resurrect its presence in our skyline.”
Soon the mural will be visible from almost anywhere in town, he said.
The mural project is entirely donation-funded, costing about $350,000, about 85% of which is already raised, said Chelsea Gleich, a spokesperson for the project.
“It is uniquely ours, it’s uniquely North Dakota and you’ll never be able to find a piece just like this anywhere else,” she said.