The time has arrived for the FINAL banner blog in the 13-week one-by-one unveiling of each piece of artwork for installation on the grain elevator. Getting to know the visionary behind each design has become the best part of this project. Each one provides a unique perspective that we can’t imagine the final installation, as [...]
Category: Competition
With the silos positioned prominently in the middle of Omaha along Interstate 80, a major artery that moves from the east coast to the west with 450 miles through the state of Nebraska, Brian Kelly, an Omaha architect and educator approached his submission as a prime opportunity for initiating dialogue about the issues affecting the [...]
Omaha artist Mary Day scanned an ear of corn for what she calls a ‘cliche’; to be in Nebraska is to be surrounded by corn, literally and figuratively. And the image of the corn cob is a most obvious recall of the identity and function of the grain elevator as a structure that originally stored [...]
‘Aerial Production’, by DeOld Andersen Architecture, a partnership between Nebraska natives Emily Andersen and Geoff DeOld, depicts the transformation of the Midwest landscape at the city edge from farmstead to suburban and exurban development. Focusing on a swath of land at the edge of Omaha two miles long by a half mile wide, three different [...]
Recent works by Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser and Alice Waters indicate that the rapid expansion of industrial monoculture farming is adversely effecting national health while making it economically prohibitive and politically difficult for smaller farms to survive. As a result, and contrary to this trend, small farms have an increasingly crucial role in providing healthy [...]
Influenced by the structural elements of grain elevator architecture, Omaha graphic designer Cathy Solarana chose the subordinate drive shed as her focus of exploration. Drive sheds had their own structural and functional personalities despite being dwarfed by the huge multi-barreled contiguous white concrete cylinders they served. They were as unique and interesting as the elevators [...]
Inspired by the Stored Potential project description reference to “reading the landscape,” public artist Matthew Farley immediately envisioned center-pivot irrigation circles. An aerial reminder of the grid system imposed over much of the United States by Thomas Jefferson’s 1785 National Land Survey, the pattern still provides the basic geometric order of the once unruly Great [...]
Corn is undeniably the heart of the ‘Cornhusker State’. Aside from the moniker of college football where on game days, Memorial Stadium is referred to as the third largest ‘city’ in the state, the seasonal landscape is ruled by the growing cycle of ‘The King Crop’. In spring, fields on the outskirts of the cities [...]
It can be hard to believe, but once 75% of the American population lived in rural areas. Remnants of this era, when more people were physically close to the production of food, come in many sizes: from a towering grain elevator to simple, manually-run farm implements. For pastel artist Matthew Rezac, who grew up near [...]
Producing nearly one and a half billion bushels per year, Nebraska is unquestionably one of the best places in the world to grow corn. Though Nebraska’s fertile soil and hot humid summers provide an ideal environment for corn, parts of the area lack sufficient precipitation to adequately meet the demands of such a water intensive [...]
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