Not at the Minnesota State Fair, 2021

I'm not going to the Minnesota State Fair this year, probably for obvious reasons. 

If you're from here, you've heard that there's no mask or vaccine requirement, which means the people most likely to attend are people without masks (even inside buildings) or vaccines. The parts of the Fair I enjoy most are all inside buildings (the Art Show, the Eco-Experience, the craft entries, the displays in the horticulture building, and especially the Crop Art). So it didn't seem like the best idea to go.

So this is my virtual visit to the Crop Art, mostly via Twitter. I couldn't miss it completely.

Here's what the line to check the work out looked like on the first morning, courtesy of Star Tribune columnist Jennifer Brooks, who posted a bunch of photos of her visit.

Not many masks in sight (though many backs are turned).

Does your State Auditor do crop art? Minnesota's auditor, Julie Blaha, does. This year, she did two pieces, one of the new logo of her department and the other a public health message for the state's covid vaccine drive. (Photos by Blaha.)

Jay Gabler from MinnPost captured this anti-Fair crop art by Neil Graham:

As is usual these days, Laura Melnick won the grand prize with her meticulously conceived, illustrated, and crafted dissection of one of our country's dire problems. This time it was about the party of sedition:

 

Here's a close-up so you can appreciate Melnick even more when you click to enlarge the image:

That photo is by a friend of someone named Ellen (that's the only attribution I've seen).

The rest of the works I could find, all of which are in photos by Jennifer Brooks unless noted otherwise, I enjoyed mostly just for fun.

Christy Klancher had two pieces that I liked. First a portrait of comedian Lizz Winstead, creator of The Daily Show:

Second was this GenX call-back to the locally made Oregon Trail game, where it always seemed that your character managed to die from dysentery:

This sweater by Jesse Christensen was a real eye-catcher on the wall. (I just realized it's the Dude's sweater from The Big Lebowski. I knew it looked familiar):

Local cartoonist and bicyclist-about-town Andy Singer gave us the Hamm's Beer bear, back in the saddle:

And a beginner named Wendy (photo shared by her on Twitter) seems to have caught the hang of the seed:

 

Wendy's Twitter bio says she's a painter, so that definitely gives her an edge. I look forward to more from her at future Fairs that I can attend in person!