Cement plants, mines, gravel pits or oil refineries aren't generally considered things of beauty.
They serve their purpose to society and are typically hidden away from the metropolis. Those who use their products hardly think of them.
UNM student Nina Elder's sense of wonder extends far beyond the norm to see these industrial plants as beauty and as art.
Her honors thesis show "Plant Industrial Landscapes of the American Southwest" is a testament to this.
"There is perfection in land and sky, but industry inspires me to create," she said at the show's opening night. "I paint these mechanical forms in an attempt to understand their presence in nature as well as their role in society, yet my primary stimulus is the formal beauty of industrial sites."
Six 8-by-3 paintings line the walls of the John Sommers Gallery, boasting big, bright colors not typically associated with industrial plants.
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"The tension that I feel between nature and industry, form and function, is embodied in the aching contrasts of the pigments in my paint," she said.
What stands out about Elder's work is not just the color, but gorgeous shapes that keep the viewer enchanted, directing the eye. It's like an abstract painting made up of geometric shapes fused together to form a larger substance and expression.
Tubes lead the eye all over the 8-foot attraction - cylinders, squares, rectangles, the simple elegance of the mountains, all entwined together. The wrong colors make the viewer wonder what is going on in Elder's mind.
"Often, men in plaid shirts and work boots ask, 'You want to paint that?' and are incredulous of my answers," she said "These places that extrude the ingredients of our material lives are both physically amazing and hold immense social gravity, and thus are a subject matter worth the confrontation."
The work is refreshing because it doesn't try too hard. It's not a commentary on waste, the environment or the factory workers' union issues. It doesn't push politics on the viewer.
It's about form, color, lines and nothing else. There's no thinking about it, just absorption - what you see is what you get.
Is the work then simply pop art?
"Pop is defined as fine art that borrows its imagery from mass consumer culture," Elder said. "I diverge from pop by creating fine art that steals its imagery from the places that create the material goods on which mass consumer culture is based."
Whatever its classification, the work is more than an everyday accomplishment. The way Elder transforms typically ignored eyesores into eye candy is a hymn to the beauty of the human mind thinking out of the box.
"Plant Industrial Landscapes of the American Southwest"
Nina Elder
John Sommers Gallery
Grade A
