An Australian artist is creating a massive mural in the middle of a
small North Dakota town
[August 05, 2025]
By JACK DURA
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.
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Artist Guido van Helten poses for a photo on Monday, July 14, 2025,
in front of the grain elevator and silos in Minot, N.D., where he is
painting a large mural. Behind him is the boom lift he uses to
ascend the structure. (AP Photo/Jack Dura)
 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.
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