About Big Easel
Goodland’s Big Easel lifts a reproduction of a Vincent van Gogh sunflower painting high above Pioneer Park. The steel structure stands about 80 feet tall and weighs roughly 40,000 pounds. Its painted canvas measures 24 by 32 feet, turning a museum-sized image into something visible across the surrounding streets.
The painting reproduces Three Sunflowers in a Vase, one of van Gogh’s sunflower works from Arles, France. Canadian artist Cameron Cross created the enlarged version as part of his Van Gogh Project, an effort to place gigantic reproductions in communities associated with sunflower agriculture or the artist’s life.
Goodland’s installation was completed in 2001. The city sits in a major sunflower-growing region, giving the European still life an agricultural connection to western Kansas. Engineers designed the easel to withstand powerful prairie winds, while the elevated canvas presents the delicate flowers with the structural scale of a billboard.
From a distance, the object reads as a colorful rectangle floating above the park. Up close, the legs, braces, crossbar, and painted surface reveal how much steel and planning were required to imitate a simple artist’s easel. The proportions transform an ordinary studio tool into public architecture.
The Big Easel stands in Pioneer Park near Cherry Street and East 19th Street in Goodland. The outdoor attraction is free and can be viewed throughout the year. Parking and paths allow visitors to approach for photographs, while the nearby High Plains Museum provides more information about local history and the project.
The sculpture succeeds because it enlarges two familiar objects at once. Both the painting and the easel become enormous, yet they still preserve the visual joke of a canvas resting on a portable stand. Against the open Kansas sky, van Gogh’s sunflowers look less like still life and more like a bright roadside beacon.