Longtime readers know that State Fair crop art is something we follow in our family: it’s the changing face of the Minnesota liberal as rendered in corn. Last year M. and I smiled grimly at Obama’s birth certificate depicted in millet (progress!). Two years ago the major theme was cleaning up after the circus (and hey, remember when this guy mattered?).
This year’s star entry was snapped by Alena, one of my oldest and dearest friends, and reminds me of a saying that I just made up and wish fervently to be true: As crop art goes, so goes the nation.
God willin’.
Crop art is the art of making things out of seeds and beans and the like. There’s a robust tradition of crop art as left-wing political statement at the Minnesota State Fair.
While the piece above, “Self Portrait with First Ladies,” is utterly baffling (what’s with the Frida Kahlo references?), the ones below are more straight-forward.
The visage of our 44th president was immortalized in painstaking detail…
… while his Certificate of Live Birth urges birthers to “MOVE ON!”
AIG was dubbed “too well-connected to fail.”
Michele Bachmann, Minnesota loon and “Patron Saint of Wingnuts,” was a favorite target.
She was a featured freak in the “GOP Sideshow” alongside fat man Rush Limbaugh and snake woman AnnaConda.
And her “Precious Moments” were celebrated in millet.
Finally, on an entirely different note, Farrah was remembered as an icon should: with dried beans.
The GOP taking a poo on the Constitution, rendered in beans and seeds.
Last night, in my post-concert, post-margarita stupor, I totally missed the glaringly obvious political commentary in the images my dad sent me of crop art from the Minnesota State Fair.
My dad writes:
The Minnesota state fair has a grand tradition of crop art, i.e. pictures made out of seeds and beans. Lately it has become a hotbed of political satire. This year we had three using the opportunity of the upcoming GOP convention in MN to focus on the problems related to elephant poop. I’m enclosing them.
As an added bonus, I’m enclosing an entry in the scarecrow competition (yes, we have one). This is one of the President. You can’t tell from the photo, but he has a VERY long nose. And he’s got our Senator on a puppet string.
Most of these won a ribbon by the way.
Here’s Obama, saying: “Too bad we’re cleaning up their messes!”
And, again, the dirtiest job in the circus…
The Great American Cooking Project