Bigggly!

Artist and Macalester College professor of art Ruthann Godollei has her Printland studio in a small, little-noticed building in Saint Paul's Creative Enterprise Zone. Behind the building, tucked into a corner next to an adjacent loading dock, I'd recently noticed some plywood walls that seemed to be hiding something large. So I wasn't totally surprised when I got an email from her inviting a visit to see something she's calling Bigggly.

Back in 2018, Godollei created an exhibit called Hellmouth, inspired by her research at the Circus Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin. As the Macweekly newspaper described it,

The largest piece in the gallery is a wagon hand-painted to look like President Trump. It has tiki torches and 75 yards of red, satin ribbon acting as the tongue, on which Godellei has printed dozens of his most popular tweets, such as “stable genius” and “little rocket man.”

This time, her Trump critique was inspired by a wooden Christmas ornament she saw:

The red hat, the blue suit, the red almost-tie... Who did that seem like, if you were to add a Pinocchio nose?

First she mocked up a life-size version with cardboard barrels and boxes to get a sense of the proportion, then she got in touch with the folks at FAST signs in Sparta, Wisconsin, to commission the larger than life version in fiberglass, which I had seen peeking up over the plywood:

She added a detachable Pinocchio nose, which is made from structural bamboo. And now she's debating whether to stencil the white letters MAGA onto the red hat or not, to complete the image. I voted for "Yes."

Bigggly will be on the road soon. His first public appearance will be at Open Streets Lyndale on Saturday, August 24. Godollei is lining up other visits around the Twin Cities between now and Election Day in November.