The Art of Country Grain Elevators

Over forty fine photographs and forty pages of poems that get to the heart of working lives in the Midwest. //

With a focused and indefatigable passion, Bruce Selyem has been photographing the simple elegance of grain elevators within the context of austere rural landscapes for fifteen years. Grain elevators remain fascinating and treasured landmarks in many Western communities, arousing contemplation and even reverence as historic and aesthetic icons. These qualities are readily apparent in the quiet beauty and studied compositions of Selyem’s photographs. – Ellen Ornitz, Visual Arts Director, The Emerson & Beall Park, Bozeman //These are poems that spring from the ground like fresh seed, but never without human references. And it is the human references, in country circumstances, that make them familiar and understandable to everyone�.Whether he is writing about giving his father a haircut or questioning him about the Great Depression, Jon Volkmer knows farm-people intimately and describes them with bedrock wisdom in a world of tarpaper, boxcars, corn, propane tanks, drill bits, wooden elevators, concrete silos, flour mills, rats, ferrets and barn ladders. -Samuel Hazo