A few years ago I did this plein air oil painting of an orange lift outside a new structure in Woodbury. This is actually the Sur La Table store before it was built. I find I like construction areas and construction machines to draw. They are interesting and out of the ordinary. I haven’t done sketches of very many sites, but decided to do a sketch of the construction on the MN United Stadium.
When driving down 94 towards Minneapolis, I always notice the new Minnesota United Stadium going up near Midway. I marvel at the smooth white curved girders, the array of beams, the colorful cranes and lifts, and the purple siding. Looking a little like a circular roller coaster, it always gets a second look from me. I watched the US Bank stadium going up as I rolled by on 94 towards 35W. That behemoth structure looked very strange, with girders sticking up and out, and giant cranes hovered overhead. I think that’s part of the curiosity: you don’t really know what it’s going to turn out looking like, so you see the skeleton of the thing and know it has to change from there. Each piece that falls in place is like a puzzle. I was in the the neighborhood the other day so decided to sketch a little of the stadium. It will be done a year from now, but they were busy at work. I could see cranes and lifts working, with ant-like people walking around the girders and in the buckets of the lifts. I was in my car parked on a street directly across 94, so there is actually traffic zipping along right past the brown fence line, which you can’t see in the sketch. It was fun to capture a moment in time, and will be fun to go back again and sketch more progress!