While the Godfrey Dean Art Gallery has a local focus this month, the work of Kristopher Grunert has an international flavor. The photographer has travelled the world taking photos of many different structures, with modern architecture and mines making up the work presented in the gallery.
"This is a culmination of about ten years of work photographing architectural and industrial subjects. This show is showing all the work I've been doing for that long," Grunert says.
The exhibit connects photos of mines with images of modern architecture, buildings which have a unique aesthetic and make a visual statement. Grunert says it's all about the story of how the building gets made, from the raw material to the completed structure.
"I want to remind people that everything that we have comes from the earth. So really, I'm wanting to show the appreciation I have for the earth and the processes we have to extract, refine and produce raw materials which then are used to build these great structures. Everything in those buildings has come from those mines, and it has taken a great amount of energy for that process," he explains.The artist says his fascination with mines began as a young boy, and the show begins with his first photo and continues to the work he is doing now.
"I found the very first photograph I ever took, and it was on a road trip with my parents when I was 13, and it was a picture of an open pit mine. It's exciting to me to see how it has all come together."
The majority of the work is commissioned, but Grunert says that the line between the personal work and the commercial was always very thin. He also says the show removes the line entirely, and seeing the work together has emphasized how he has put his personal take on the subjects.
"It's a personal journey that I'm on, capturing what I see and what I learn."
The scale and complexity of the projects is what is fascinating to Grunert, and he feels that the initial scale of that first project he saw is what hooked him onto the subject. He says it's also rewarding to learn about different processes and watching both mining and architectural companies becoming finding ways to be more responsible to the environment and make a smaller impact in the areas where they're made.
"An architect's goal is to uplift the people that come in contact with the building, and they know that by doing it efficiently and with respect to the environment around them is important to people experiencing the structure."
The show runs at the Godfrey Dean Art Gallery until April 13. Admission is free.
