One Piece of the 2020 Minnesota State Fair

The 2020 Minnesota State Fair was cancelled (thank goodness…can you imagine?), but one thing that has carried on in person is the Fine Art Show. 

They sold tickets ahead of time, with timed entry and a very limited number of people per time, and with all the doors open and masks required, of course. Which meant that the building was much less full of people than usual, so you could look across the room at times and see no people at all, like this:

As I started to prepare this post, I realized that the works I captured were most likely to have a three-dimensional aspect. It's not that I don't like paintings and drawings — though I admit I may be more likely to turn up my nose at some than their mixed media or sculptural counterparts. But there are a lot more of them in the show, so it's hard to pick which ones to feature, among the ones I like.

Here are the sculptures or mixed media/fiber arts. As always, you can see these larger by clicking the images:

"Forbidden Fruit" by Dennis Kalow, which is made from wood and enamel (no, it's not ceramic). I found this piece disturbing for its alien implications and the pink surprise at its end.

 

"She Wore Green Velvet: Portrait of the Mississippi Watershed" by Erik Jon Olson. Quilted plastic waste. This was just about life-size.

"World of Haute Couture" by Janine Olmscheid. Folded paper and hand-stitching.

 

"Personal Project" by Mandy Smethells. Wood, paint, textiles. 

 

"Rebirth 3" by Mary Ellen Calderwood. Deconstructed water-damaged jacket.

The show included more than a dozen pieces referencing the uprising after the murder of George Floyd. As far as I could tell from the names (no guarantee, of course), none of the artists were Black or Latinx.

"The Breaching of the Third Precinct" by James Murray Casserly. Digital print of a manipulated and composited photo, I would say. 

 

"Tipping Points (Out of Circulation)" by J. Dan E. Maruska. Books on steel frame. The black-painted books are labeled with the names of people killed for racist reasons (mostly by police), with Emmet Till as the base and George Floyd at the top. (I noticed that the artist spelled Trayvon Martin's name wrong.)

Then on to the two-dimensional works.

 

"Night Hogs" by Susan Solomon, gouache on masonite, is the only painting I've included. I usually don't find myself attracted to small works, but this one is just about 6" square. 

"The Great Microdoodle Get-Together" by Jeffry Gauss is a meticulous ink drawing over a pastel wash of some kind. I neglected to take a real close-up of the drawing, so you'll just have to believe me:

Each of those little dark areas in the larger image is a conglomeration of very fine-lined drawings of particular aspects of the Minnesota State Fair, which altogether make the Ferris Wheel, Space Needle, giant swing and slide, squirrel character, and so on.

"Rondo" by Stefanie Kiihn, pen and ink. Kiihn has had similar drawings in past shows, combining a hand-drawn map of an areas with ink drawings that are based on historical photos, but this one of the Rondo neighborhood in Saint Paul is extra special, given the neighborhood's place in the city's past and the historic injustice it suffered when Interstate 94 was built in the early 1960s, all but destroying the neighborhood.

Again, I didn't take a real closeup, but you can get an okay idea from this image. That's the Credjafawn Co-op Store, a Black-run food co-op that used to be in the Rondo neighborhood. Kiihn also showed some of the destroyed houses, schools, and other institutions, and she explains why the various streets are named the way they are. 

It's an image packed with meaning and the composition brings it all together, making it look easy, though I'm sure it wasn't. Other map art by Kiihn can be seen on her website. Here's a blog post she wrote about dropping off her Rondo entry to this year's competition. That post also includes a much better image of Kiihn's "Rondo" artwork.