Humanity might still have a chance
During my recent road trip through South Australia, I spied something that gave my heart a little glow. It was about 10 storeys high and is generally considered an eyesore throughout the wheat plains of country South Australia.
You may have seen them in your country too, those ugly looking wheat silo's that simply jut from the landscape as to signify settlement and agriculture.
Well on this occasion somebody got it right and restored a little bit hope that humanity may still have a chance.
Form and function never need to be ugly, that's why we have architects and artists to smooth the visual landscape.
And as I dug a little deeper, into this story, it appears to be a community project managed by the Coorong Council costing over $100k to commission this and several other works by Guido van Helten with an aim to add some tourist appeal to the town.
And the painting is of 5 local town children, who will forever remain ageless to the passing traffic. You can read a little more about this story here.
This project had a goal of getting people to take a break in the Coonalpyn, and it certainly worked on me.
Although I could have simply visited it via Google Maps from the comfort of my home if I had already known about it.
However, there is nothing like seeing it up close and personal, as it's quite a sight to behold. So stop and take the time to admire it if you're ever passing by.
Well done humanity, today you get a pass mark from me.
Image Credit: Laila Jarboe
!steemitworldmap -35.696062 lat 139.855785 long Coonalpyn Wheat Silos d3scr
Great post @just2random. These paintings are unbelievably epic is so many ways. Helping small towns get some tourism, showing kids that art is amazing and possible to do for a living, plus also providing a spectacular canvas for artists like this to give their all. The difficulty to do something like this is immense. so massive props to Guido van Helten for pulling this off time and time again. I've painted 'whole car' train carriages before (naughty naughty 😆) and even that was tiring and very challenging.
I've seen some of Guido's works in person and as an artist myself it really blows my mind. I still can't even comprehend how he gets the proportions so accurate over such a large area. I've seen projectors used but doesn't look like he uses that method. I really feel like a white belt with crayons looking at this.
Thanks again for posting and giving amazing artists some more exposure.
According to the story, I believe he is contracted for other installations.
Note to self: Only contract yourself to 1 silo at a time, just in case you hate it.
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by just2random from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews/crimsonclad, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you would like to delegate to the Minnow Support Project you can do so by clicking on the following links: 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP. Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.
@just2random payed 1.0 SBD to @minnowbooster to buy a stealth upvote.
transaction-id b18bb9ba9d761faee89b2ae955cca62dde237937
@stealthgoat
Congratulations, Your Post Has Been Added To The Steemit Worldmap!
Author link: http://steemitworldmap.com?author=just2random
Post link: http://steemitworldmap.com?post=humanity-might-still-have-a-chance
Want to have your post on the map too?
Add the following inside your post:
!steemitworldmap xxx lat yyy long description d3scr
(replace xxx and yyy with latitude and longitude)
Woohoo! I'm officially on the map!
Nice dude! Those paintings are so good! I like that they've used the tone of the colour of the silos, so it looks super classy instead of like graffiti (not that there is anything wrong with awesome graf). Well done indeed SA!
Yeah! It's subtle and very effective, but not cheap. 200 cans of paint later. lol
@originalworks
The @OriginalWorks bot has determined this post by @just2random to be original material and upvoted it!
To call @OriginalWorks, simply reply to any post with @originalworks or !originalworks in your message!
@just2random payed 1.0 SBD to @minnowbooster to buy a stealth upvote.
transaction-id 910c20b49bc9a8f3d77e657c3d0f56cf9963c955
@stealthgoat
I love stopping in Coonalpyn now because of this. Since this art work was completed I actually make sure to stop and grab a coffee from the new cafe that opened up around the time that this piece of art was created.
I actually worked in Coonalpyn long before this was created. It wasn’t a good place to be back then. The town seems very different and happier now. It’s great to see.
That's super interesting. Do you have any degrees of separation from the kids on the artwork? If you worked in the town surely you must.
Re: Cafe, it should be on the other side of the road as there seems to be a steed flow of people, crossing what is a major highway. Could be a business opportunity :-D
I didn’t know the kids. I was only there for a few weeks while doing some work at the olive farm there. I suspect there’s probably only a couple of cafes that could successfully operate in such a small town. Crossing that highway is a bit hairy on long weekends though.
I've driven past this going to and from Victoria, but never stopped to check it out.
Great post!
Your first post on Steemit. I feel privileged.
Unfortunately, my upvote isn't worth much so I've followed you instead ;-)
This is actually my personal account, we have met with @exploreadelaide
There will be more posts coming, I just wanted to keep stuff separate :)
I didn't realise how much these cost, worth it though.
We've driven past this one a few times... It definitely brightens up the trip from Adelaide over to Melbourne.
Indeed it does. :-D And by judging the number of people stopping in the town, I think the marketing strategy worked.