Red dragon!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…
Anne and I are at that age when we’re more interested in visiting the exhibit halls than in rattling our bones on the Midway rides. We enjoy seeing what new works of paint, photography, building blocks, and 4-H instructional posters have been offered up for the various competitions. The State Fair holds its massive celebrations on behalf of our farmers, but Indiana has no shortage of artists, either. Whether adults or kids, the illustrators, sculptors, clothing designers, doll-makers and other artisans come from all demographics, work in multiple media, and bring ideas from pop culture as well as from their own influences and home lives. They each contribute in their own ways to the Hoosier State creative legacy.
Tacosaurus was the largest artwork we saw that day.
A crocheted T-Rex fossil nearly as tall as me.
Crocheted Muppets!
More Muppets, different crocheter.
I don’t usually brake for the fashion displays, but cosplay is different.
The Pevensies of Narnia!
Key lime pie sculpture, not a Taste of the Fair dessert.
If Stephen Stills from Scott Pilgrim became a Fallout ghoul.
Tiny Mondrian!
One of a few different paintings by local artist Naomi Turnipseed.
Boxing match.
Red the red Angry Bird.
Daydreamer of butterflies.
Activism in black and white and fire.
Roy Lichtenstein x Manga!
Mona Lisa three-pointer.
It’s last February’s Muppet Show Disney+ special with their special guest star Sabrina Carpenter!
Peanuts!
Jurassic Park in beads.
Mickey and Minnie!
“Lunar Goddess” from a “diamond painting” kit.
Because we need more excuses for walking to burn off our Taste of the Fair calories, I also like perusing the science-poster competitions. Those club assignments can sometimes be dry and humorless in accordance with the strict rules for their specific areas of interest, but I’ve made an annual game of looking for glimmers of creativity and inspiration that stick out like diamonds in the rough, whether their titles be pop-culture references, offbeat subjects, or just Dad-jokes. I’ll take what I can get. Our rediscovery of the other 4-H hall also introduced us to entire poster categories we’d never witnessed before…
I was 54 when I learned livestock breeders have means to coax animals that aren’t in heat into heat.
I am HERE for all the bee jokes, no matter how BEE-labored they are.
At last, concrete research in the field of feline fatties.
So, SO many reports on llamas.
It’s time teens taught other teens proper gun handling.
My absolute favorite: rating pop-culture archers on whether or not they accurately depict their craft. This subject has bugged me ever since I had to do an archery unit in my college PE class.
To be continued! Other chapters in this very special MCC miniseries:
Part 1: Our “Taste of the Fair” Tour, Worst to Best
Part 2: The Year in VHS
Part 3: The Year of America’s 250th
Part 4: The Year in Cakes
Part 5: The Year in Lego
Part 7: [coming soon]
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Midlife Crisis Crossover! 