Grand Forks native Casey Opstad returns to create 140-foot-long artwork for new Altru Hospital

The exhibit "has personal meaning that goes beyond any type of work I've ever done on a professional level," the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based artist said. "I was made to do this."

Artist Casey Opstad is shown working in a temporary studio in the former Rhombus Guys Brewery in downtown Grand Forks, painting murals for the new Altru Hospital. A Walter Piehl painting is displayed in the foreground.

Eric Hylden/Grand Forks Herald

Visitors, patients and employees who walk through the halls or relax in waiting rooms at the new Altru Hospital will likely contemplate and appreciate the artwork around them.

They might not, however, readily grasp its significance.

It has been produced by more than a dozen regional artists, created over the past many months for the permanent collection “The Art of Wellness,” commissioned by Altru Health System. The most extensive project is the panorama, a series of panels of artwork in a main-floor corridor – linking the hospital and the emergency room – along an exterior wall of windows facing southeast.

Grand Forks native Casey Opstad, now of Brooklyn, N.Y., and a few fellow artists have created a series of 33 panels – a linear display spanning 140 feet – that capture scenes along Highway 2 from Grand Forks to Williston, a route he knows well.

The public is invited to view the artwork – and other areas of the hospital – during an open house from 2 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 9. Tours are set for 2-5 and 6-7 p.m. Tours for older adults will be given from 2 to 4 p.m., but people can come anytime they wish, officials say. A brief program, with a ribbon-cutting, begins at 5:30 p.m.

Visitors are encouraged to enter the hospital campus via either 11th Avenue South or 14th Avenue South, proceeding to South 30th Street and then entering the hospital lot that throughout the years has been considered the back of the hospital (but is actually the side of the new hospital). Attendees can find parking in the north lot and take a shuttle to the entrance, or they can take advantage of free valet parking. Wheelchairs will be provided for those in need.

In addition to Opstad, other artists whose work is displayed in Altru’s permanent collection are Pirjo Berg, Haley Brothers, Michael Conlan, Paul Gronhovd, Senta Grzadzielewski, Todd Hebert, Adam Kemp, Hillary Kempenich, Micah McHugh, Jolene Mikkelson, Walter Piehl, Jason Restemayer, Kelly Thompson and Jessie Thorson.

Developing this permanent collection that celebrates area artists “has been so fun, because people have their favorites,” said Vickie Arndt, who curated the project in her role with the Public Arts Commission. “Like Todd Hebert’s ‘Bubbles,’ it makes me happy every time I look at it. Every painting has a story and a connection to North Dakota.”

The new hospital also features a rotating exhibit, displaying art provided by the North Dakota Museum of Art and UND Art Collections.

‘Beauty remains’

Opstad’s “Seasons” panels, most of which are 4-by-8-feet wide, tell a visual story through an array of images that stand out in his memory from driving west on Highway 2 to visit family.

As a series, the “giant painting” of the North Dakota landscape captures “the Sorlie Memorial Bridge in a springtime sunrise to the sunset snow-covered buttes of Williston in winter,” he said. “It’s a celebration of this place, made by people from here and, like the landscape it represents, is visually stunning …”

In his proposal for the art commission, Opstad wrote that “I find comfort in the views along Highway 2, a road I have traveled my entire life. My parents were raised on homesteads out west. ... I remember the tiny child me with Grandpa Bernard and Grandma Betty witnessing a pow wow at the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation in New Town.”

He recalls traveling west for holidays and to attend weddings and funerals, “every season of the year,” he said. “I once rode a bike from Grand Forks to Granville, where my Pop picked me up and insisted on driving the final leg to Minot, a conversation settled over breakfast at the VFW.

“Now, many years later, I am on this road again, this time with my sister Trina to clean out Pop’s assisted-living condo in Minot. Though the seasons change and years go by, the beauty of this place remains.”

Artists Abby Manock and Casey Opstad work on the "Seasons" display, a 140-foot-long series of panels depicting iconic North Dakota images, at the new Altru Hospital on Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024. The series is part of Altru's permanent collection, which features the work of regional artists who were commissioned by Altru Health System.

Eric Hylden/Grand Forks Herald

The “Seasons” artwork – meant to be read from left to right – reflects images ranging from morning to night. It has been likened to spring to winter, or birth to death, said artist Abby Monack, who collaborated on the project.

One of the first panels, which depicts the flowers in the Opstad backyard garden, is rich in color, with highly saturated hues, while in artwork at the end of the series “the palette starts to get more muted,” suggesting nighttime, Monack said, and the width of the panels decreases.

Personal achievement

For Opstad, a 1995 Red River High School graduate who earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from UND in 2000, this is a personal achievement.

“I was made to do this,” he said.

Along with Manock, he collaborated with Brian Paulsen, Walter Piehl Jr. and David Rathman. Mike Mulligan and Tony Taylor, of Co-Pilot Design, a local firm, constructed the bases for the panels. Gene Karel helped build easels in short order and donated an air compressor and a pneumatic staple gun. Chad Caya and Nate Lappergaard provided lighting and sound at the temporary downtown studio.

Paulsen, a UND visual arts professor, “is the major reason I pursued a life in the arts,” Opstad said. “He was a role model who didn’t fit the stereotypical image of an ‘artist.’ Clean clothes. Well dressed. Professional. Extremely detailed.”

Piehl, whom he met in 2005 during a project he worked on at Minot State University, “reminds me of cowboys, farming and towns in western North Dakota,” he said.

Opstad met Rathman during graduate studies at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and was impressed by “his thoughtful and honest approach,” he said. Rathman, a Montana native, has had multiple solo shows in Los Angeles and New York City; his work has also been shown, along with that of other artists, in galleries in Minneapolis, New York and Los Angeles, Opstad said.

Starting work

In early October, initial work on the western-themed panels began at Opstad’s father’s farmhouse near Minot. Then, for more than two months, he worked in a studio blessed with natural light in the former Rhombus Guys Brewery, the old Opera House, in downtown Grand Forks, in space provided by Aaron Hendricks and Matt Winjum.

“I couldn’t do this without support from these two,” Opstad said.

Opstad invited the public – especially art teachers and students – to Friday evening open-studio events, so they might see the progress of the work, visit and talk with him about the process of painting on a large scale.

By doing so, he believed people would have “more of a connection to it,” because they would get to see it created, Opstad wrote in his proposal.

The whole process was open to the public, he said, “because ‘Seasons,’ like Altru Hospital, is for its community.”

Many of the “Seasons” panels are created from photographs that have been printed using equipment Opstad purchased specifically for this project, he said. The images were printed on a special grade of canvas to which the artist applied acrylic paint.

Opstad has worked on numerous large-scale projects, including a mural in downtown Grand Forks for Bank Forward and other work for PayPal and New York City’s Department of Transportation, General Assembly tech education company, Kenneth Cole fashion house, DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) Business Improvement District and the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Before final installation of the artwork, Opstad took time-lapse photos in the hospital hallway, where it would be displayed, to gauge how the changing light throughout the day would affect it.

He and fellow artists gave careful consideration to the space they were selected to fill.

“The hallway is such a large space,” Opstad said. “We thought about how people will feel when they see these (panels), and how they might relate to the landscape, (using) light and seasons and different portions of towns.”

“We definitely wanted to have a slough, because of all the migratory birds and hunting,” he recalled. One of the panels captures the image of a slough about two hours west of Grand Forks.

“The images will work for (this space) because they are easy to read,” he said.

The series also includes Rathman artwork: a pickup truck, the inside of a tractor, a hay bailer, and a four-panel set of hockey scenes – a total of nine panels altogether.

The artists intended for this series to “spark a collective memory,” Opstad said. “It was important for it to be recognizable.”

A special place

Altru Hospital holds a special place in Opstad’s heart, he said. It’s where he was born, where his mother worked and where his sister underwent surgery for a ruptured appendix. He took a summer job doing lawncare there.

“Yet Altru is much more than a brick building of my memory,” he said. “Altru is a cornerstone of the region, where former classmates work and where everybody goes for care. ‘Seasons’ is from my heart, and a hospital is such a better place than a gallery or museum (for displaying the art) because the hospital, like the painting, is full of life.”

With art exhibited throughout, the new hospital qualifies as the area’s newest art gallery, Arndt said.

“This is the art center of Grand Forks,” she said, adding that she hopes people will come just to view the art. “It’s like a free art gallery.”

“It’s museum-quality work that’s being done here,” Arndt said. “These artists really stepped up.”

And the opportunity to exhibit artwork in a hospital “doesn’t come along very often.”

The “Seasons” series is “the right piece for this place, and it’s the right time,” Opstad wrote in his proposal many months ago. “Hospitals are a special place. They can be a crossroad. They house moments of great importance for people, and I want to be there with them in my painting.”

The exhibit he proposed “has personal meaning that goes beyond any type of work I’ve ever done on a professional level,” he wrote. In the process of moving his father from an assisted-living facility in Minot to a Grand Forks facility for more advanced care, “I’m witnessing the cycles of life play out in front of me.

“The importance of a comforting space has taken on new resonance. I will put everything I have into this, and I hope to fill the hospital with love and grace.”

SOURCE: Grand Forks Herald