MN State Fair

morgan1 and I went to the State Fair today.

1. Fine-Arts building. Edgier art seems to have actually taken some awards this year. So often the awards go to things that are cute, or obsequiously provincial in a saccharine "Ain't Minnesota Grand?" kinda way. As it was, there was a wall dedicated to Minnehaha Falls. There was actually a lot of mixed media.

Particuarly impressive to me:

• A rather disturbing watercolor called "Nine to Five" that sort of put me in mind of Chief Broom's opening monologue from Kesey's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Humanity trapped in a machine, as cogs and nothing more.
  
  
• A Pencil Piece of a longhaired cat that had just been bathed and was positively seething. It was entitled "The Princess is Not Amused."
  
  
• A watercolor of a tabby cat curled up in the bowl of a 1930's era vanity, when the artist learly wishes to wash his brushes.
  
  
• A Sculpture called "War on Terrorism" - an American flag made of mousetraps. I laughed at the sight of it. I have no idea what authorial intent was, but I think it is a bit of a political Rorschach test. My impulse was to read it to mean that America has become a place with more traps and less freedom. Others may interpret it to mean "terrorists check in, but they don't check out." I think it was this semiotic mutability that caused it to win the People's Choice award.
  
  
• There was a stunning watercolor called "Chicago, November" which made me kind of homesick, because the scene depicted looked for all the world like in intersection in Flushing, under the No. 7 train.
  
  
• But my favorite piece, the piece which would have caused me to feed an artist's money-frog if I had a spare $950.00, was a piece called "The Old Future Meets The New Future," a humorous, ironic, and edgy look at the schism between what people in the 50's imagined the year 2000 would look like and what it does in fact look like. The composition leads the eye across a parallel vision of the imagined future and the reality to a point on the canvas where a Hummer H2 has collided with a streamlined art-deco mag-lev train, the operator and passenger of the H2 thrown from the vehicle to their deaths. (OK, so I'm bitter, you've been reading my journal -- you knew that!)
  

2. DFL Booth

DFL stands for Democratic-Farmer-Labor party - a nod to a time when these existed as separate parties in Minnesota. We filled out surveys, requested a Lawn Sign, and picked up some Kerry/Edwards swag. It was a friendly space.

3. Dinner:
Shish-Kebabs, Corn Fritters, Veggie Tempura onna stick, and S'mores comprised my dinner. Morgan had Fried Green Tomatoes instead of Corn Fritters.

4. Hobbies and Crafts
Lots of fine needlework. I always find myself blown away by the first few pieces, and then it's like "oh, another knitted vest." Morgan, who knits such things herself, has a deeper appreciation of these than I do. Fortunately, the Fair has been doing a better job of integrating the displays. There was a beautiful hand-built Kayak with a vine-and-leaf motif inlaid on the decks. Who has the 'nads to actaully paddle such a craft, I wonder? There was also the inevitable cross-stitched "Last Supper" as well as a stained glass "floating Jesus" among the iconography.

And then we went home.

EDITED to correct Morgan's Dinner.