Crop Art 2018

Now that the 2018 Minnesota State Fair is over, I finally have time to post about it. I went about halfway through — last Tuesday — on a rainy day when attendance was probably about as low as it got this year (since records were broken on five out of 10 days and the total record was also surpassed).

Here are my favorites from the Crop Art and scarecrow displays. First a couple of novice pieces:


I appreciated the composition and spontaneity of the one on the left by Choice Inc. and the meticulous lettering and seed placement on the Vertigo poster by Nancy Linden.


Mya Betts really got the hang of it with her origami-themed abstract.


Marita Stolee's spectacular wearable goggles manage to be both steampunk and haute couture.

There were a couple of pieces with nonpolitical meaning that caught my eye:


Among the three entries commemorating the MPR raccoon, this one by Heidi Hildreth was the best one, since it both rendered the raccoon really well and tied in the Fair's "on a stick" schtick.


This entry by Steve and Amy Saupe, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the worldwide flu pandemic, was entered in the Special Occasion division. Excellent composition and use of the natural colors. Way to make those viruses look like explosives and tie in the number of Minnesota dead, too!

Then there were the political works:


Mina Leierwood rendered the smiling head of Ilhan Omar, candidate for Congress from the 5th District. (That's birchbark used to create Ilhan's hijab.)


Teresa Anderson's 3D garden of resistance flowers appealed to the gardener in me.


And I loved this version of Mulligan as grotesque baby by Nick Rindo. He really captured the Baron Harkonnen we all know defines our president.

And that leads me to the scarecrows, which were dominated by three Mulligans:


The first is a piñata, riding on (impaled on?) a golf club.


The second has a head of wood and hair of straw... kind of an empty suit.


I probably liked this one, based on the Trump Baby balloon, the best. I didn't notice the crow on top of its head until I was writing up this post, though.

I'm not sure if I will post again about the Fair (the fine art show, among other things). It was a pretty quick trip. But as always, the Crop Art is worth the price of admission.