MANKATO – Guido van Helten pulled his Ford Ranger truck up to the 122-foot-tall concrete silos overlooking this south-central Minnesota city last week and scanned the gray clouds on the horizon.
The pounding rain had stopped, but bone-chilling temperatures and wind gusts of up to 36 mph threatened to keep him from working on the massive mural he was hired to paint on the Ardent Mills silos next to the Minnesota River.
"I think I'm going up," van Helten said, pulling on a knit cap and gloves.
He secured a harness around himself and hooked it onto an open metal basket lift that he would pilot up the silos where his monumental artwork was just beginning to take shape.
Working close to the concrete silos with a spray gun and a brush, van Helten layered on paint that from afar would look like a photograph.
Van Helten is a 32-year-old Australian who has built an international reputation for his photorealistic murals in his homeland, Europe, Scandinavia and the United States. He immerses himself in a place before settling on a theme that reflects the location and its people. Before deciding on a theme for his Mankato project — one of his largest murals to date — he made two trips to the city to photograph and spend time with its people.
He's also collaborating with local photographer Sara Hughes, who has captured images illustrating the city's diversity and inclusive activities. Hughes also is documenting van Helten's work, which will wrap around the silos so that it's visible from the city center and from Hwy 169.
While he won't reveal his final sketch for the project, van Helten said it was influenced by the "Education Day" activities at the Mahkato Wacipi, or Mankato Pow Wow. The annual gathering honors the 38 Dakota warriors hanged in 1862 by the U.S. government at the end of a brief but bloody uprising. The pow wow festival symbolizes reconciliation.
