From Grain to Gallery
​How one crazy idea became the Kunze Gallery.
A long time ago, when two sister grain elevators still stood together. Before McDonald's came to Creston. Before cannabis was legal. Back when these old elevators were filled with grain instead of paintings.
The man on the right is Ray. He owned the elevators when this story began. The woman on the left is me.
One day I had what seemed like a crazy idea.
What if this became an art gallery?
After gathering enough courage, I called Ray. We met at the elevator, and I'll never forget walking through those doors for the first time.
I'm still not sure what hit me first, the smell of old grain, the massive timber beams, or Ray himself, rocking in his chair with a smoke hanging from the corner of his mouth.
Ray showed me around while I looked past the dust, and decades of things tucked into every corner. Back then, you could even walk through the back and see the inner workings of the elevator. It wasn't hard to imagine the years of grain that had passed through those walls.
​A few months later, we did it. Kunze Gallery opened, not in the elevator itself, which was still a little too dusty but in the little building beside it. It wasn't fancy, but it was ours, and it was the beginning of something special. A few years later, Columbia Basin Trust purchased the property from Ray. The red elevator was restored while we worked around the construction during the summer months. Sadly, its sister elevator is no longer with us.
It's hard to believe it's been almost ten years since that first conversation with Ray. The gallery has grown and changed over the years, but it all began with one old grain elevator, one crazy idea, and one man willing to say, "Let's give it a try."
And every now and then, Ray still drops by for a visit.