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A business remodeling project resulted in a wall-size rural landscape painting and space for a Golla family heirloom at the Luverne Farm Store this summer.
After Nate Golla restructured the store’s display area to make space for a conference room, he contemplated what to do with the resulting bare wall in the new meeting room.
“I had this great big wall and I didn’t know what to do with it,” he said.
Recognizing an opportunity for original art, Golla advertised on Facebook that he was seeking an artist to create a story in color.
“I wanted a farm scape — a picture of a farm scene,” Golla said.
He asked artists to submit sketches, and the winning proposal came from McKenzie Wieneke, daughter of Michele (Miller) and Andrew Wieneke, Lismore.
She suggested a storyline image that would include nostalgic farm equipment and buildings, along with modern machinery, confinement buildings and rolling fields and round hay bales.
“A lot of this is symbolic of where and how I grew up,” said Wieneke, a 2016 Adrian High School graduate. “The finishing barn is adapted from the one on my dad’s farm.”
But she admitted she had never painted a farm scene and never anything the size of an entire wall.
“I’ve never done anything like this before,” Wieneke said. “I’m very proud of it.”
“We kind of took a chance on each other,” Golla said. “She just nailed it.”
Working with Golla on the initial sketches, she applied the acrylic paint to enlarged images projected on the wall.
“I feel like God was guiding the paintbrush,” Wieneke said. “I didn’t know I was capable of this.”
Golla said he’s eager to show off the finished product. “It’s so fantastic, people need to see it,” he said,
Wieneke said it was an honor to work with Golla and the Farm Store. “I’m grateful to be recognized for my talent and to be able to put it to use on such a large scale,” she said.
Other conversation pieces in the conference room are a wall-size display cabinet that was original to the Farm Store his grandfather, George Golla, opened in 1948.
Also, Golla commissioned FBT Sawmill in Steen to make a conference table that would reflect the rural nature of the business. And the conference room door is wrapped with an image of tasseling corn that Quality Printing designed and printed.
“The Farm Store serves the agriculture industry and I wanted this room to reflect that,” Golla said.