The Art at the Fair

I went last night with my friend D & my old coworker F and hung the art at the Mountain State Fair. It took hours - more than 3, to be specific, and I got home at like 11:30, leaving me just enough time to go to the Westville real quick and slam down 3 pints of PBR before bed. Then this morning we went back to the fair and judged the art.

I meant to take pictures but I didn't. I would have felt oddly guilty - some of the art is scarily awful, some is laughable, some is pretty good, but all of it, obviously, means something to the artist in question. And I shouldn't be so snarky. That said, while I find the chickens and horses entered in the Portraits category lovable, I am less kind to the landscapes, chickens, hummingbirds and trees entered in the Still Life category. This year I even wrote testy comments in the judges' manual and refused to give them any ribbons at all.

It is fun to judge, though. There are about a billion categories, divided by medium and genre: some have lots of entry, like oil landscapes and pencil drawing and some have one or none, like abstract acrylic or amateur calligraphy. D & I walked along and said things like "Wow." "That is truly unbearable." "Oh my god why would someone mat their ballpoint pen drawing of Galadriel with shiny ribbon? Can we eliminate that as too painful for human eyes?" "Look at those teeth!" "That giant bird is about to attack those badly drawn children - heh, heh - blue ribbon for sheer weirdness." So it's a good time. Although it does happen early in the morning. Too early.

Still, you get to walk around the exhibits tent while it's all being judged and set up. Year after year these dedicated old people come and work on the fair, setting up bales of hay, positioning stuffed chickens and setting up the giant childrens' diorama exhibition which always makes me want to go home and make dioramas for the rest of my life. It's a wildly underappreciated art form. The vegetables - giant pumpkins, gourds, potatos - begin to trickle in. The special children's vegetable decorating contest is put on display. There's really nothing to be said about that one. It is what it says it is. Vegetables decorated by special children. Meanwhile, in the background the carnies are setting up the ferris wheel. D refused to walk over to the midway to take pictures with me on the grounds that if he saw how the rides were put together he'd be afraid to ride them. We did, however, get to see Babe, the giant ox, on whose ample back my friends A & M & I posited the start of a whole new religion (he is so calm! He is our god, and he is peaceful, yea, and huge!) He was lying down behind a trailer. I was a little afraid to approach my god, since he is mighty, and if he decided to be less peaceful I would be as nothing, but I did get a picture.