Tag Archives: art

Indiana State Fair 2023 Photos, Part 5 of 9: The Year in Art, 3-D Division

August 29, 2023 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A quasi-stained glass sculpture of Deadpool's upper half. He has his swords on his back. His hands are cupped in a heart shape.

Glass Deadpool loves you!

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…

…and as we discussed last chapter, we are now “enjoy the exhibit halls more than the carnival rides” years old. Beyond all those Lego kits and original creations, sculpture and dioramas came in other media and forms throughout the fairground art competitions.

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Indiana State Fair 2023 Photos, Part 4 of 9: The Year in Lego

August 27, 2023 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
a massive Lego black Star Desroyer, which had to have taken a few thousand bricks.

Lego Eclipse-class Super Star Destroyer, which first appeared in the Star Wars Expanded Universe graphic novel Dark Empire.

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…

When we were kids, the Midway’s amusement-park rides and rigged carnival games were the most important part of the fair. The adults who brought us to the fair wanted to see the exhibits a lot more than we did. We’re now older than they were at the time, and have come to enjoy the opportunities for art appreciation across the fairground exhibit halls. It’s fun seeing the latest round of multimedia works from artists of all ages, skill levels, and facilitating organizations, be they 4-H or local collectives. One of the commonest media among the younger demos is Lego, that blessed sculptor’s tool that’s rigid and flexible, comes with instructions and lends itself to freewheeling flights of fancy.

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Indiana State Fair 2023 Photos, Part 2 of 9: The Year in Food Art

August 26, 2023 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Cheese sculpture! Refer to caption.

Apropos of Indiana, a cheese sculpture of a cow dunking a basketball, much as one might dunk a donut in her milk.

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…

Our favorite part is the new food, but some of their most ingenious uses of food are available neither for purchase nor consumption. Exhibit A: the annual cheese sculpture at the Agricultural & Horticultural Building. Each year sculptor Sarah Kaufmann spends days carving hundreds of pounds of cheese into recognizable, cartoony shapes. This year Kaufmann couldn’t make it; in her place the State Fair welcomed food artist Nancy Baker, whose works have appeared in such TV competitions as Food Network’s Halloween Wars and Disney+’s Foodtastic (hosted by Nope‘s Keke Palmer), and who in an episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show graciously made a pie with her celebrity interviewer’s face on it.

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My Free Comic Book Day 2023 Results, Ranked

May 27, 2023 By in Comics/Lit Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
The nine free comics I picked up.

The reading pile, alphabetized by publisher.

It’s that time of year again, but delayed on my part! Saturday, May 6th was the 22nd Free Comic Book Day, that annual celebration when comic shops nationwide offer no-strings-attached goodies as a form of community outreach in honor of that time-honored medium where words and pictures dance in unison on the printed page, whether in the form of super-heroes, monsters, cartoon all-stars, licensed merchandise, or in rare instances real-world protagonists. It’s one of the best holidays ever for hobbyists like me who’ve been comics readers since the days when drugstores sold them for thirty-five cents each and comic book movies were shoddier than actual B-movies.

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Our 2022 Road Trip #27: Rutland on the Way Out

April 28, 2023 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A mural painted on a brick wall depicting Batman busting through the wall. Flying next to him is a griffin with a superhero-stylized "G" on its chest.

Detail from the mural Batman vs. Griffin by Kathryn Wiegers.

As a comics collector since age 6, I’d love it if every single one of our vacations made time for at least one comics-related stop. Sadly that’s a rare theme among those who start up new tourist attractions that aren’t amusement parks. Once upon a time, our next stop in Vermont used to have deep connections with the wild world of superhero comics. I’d hoped to enjoy evidence of that, but we got the impression the place just isn’t the same anymore. The same, I’m sure, could be said of many places we’ve been, but my hopes were perhaps a bit too high going in.

Because I insisted we make time for it, Rutland ended up as the last city we visited before we left Vermont. It was not our favorite.

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The Ex-Capital Birthday Weekend, Part 10 of 10: An Epilogue of Film, Fowl, and Facades

April 21, 2023 By in Indiana, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Several dishes on a wood table in a hardwood restaurant. Meal details are described later in the entry.

Welcome to The Eagle! That’s the name of the restaurant, not the main dish.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

In addition to our annual road trips, my wife Anne and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our respective birthdays together traveling to some new place or attraction as a short-term road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on those most wondrous days, partly to explore areas we’ve never experienced before. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do…

Thanks very much to those of you who’ve followed along with my eight previous, glacially posted galleries that comprised our October journey around Indiana’s original state capital Corydon. Whereas the first chapter was a prologue about a donut shop we tried along the way, so too is our epilogue connected to the main storyline only by our timing and our desire to add still more festivities to Anne’s autumn birthday weekend. As a capper, we spent Saturday on Massachusetts Avenue, downtown Indianapolis’ premier upscale restaurant hub. On one end of Mass Ave we planned for lunch; on the other, a film for a special occasion. All told, the meal was better than the movie.

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Our 2022 Road Trip #22: Little State, Big State House

January 28, 2023 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments
The Vermont State House on a gray day, gold-leaf dome shining and citizens hanging around.

The old leaf dome of the Vermont State House shines through a gray post-rainy late morning.

In our early traveling years we didn’t make a point of visiting every state capital or capitol building along our route because, well, we hadn’t really considered collecting them like trading stamps or Beanie Babies. In later years we’ve regretted bypassing a few that were within reach (e.g., Richmond, Frankfort, Jackson) and/or those capitals we did visit but skipped their capitols (Little Rock, Topeka). In more recent times we’ve upgraded their priority level and included them where so inclined and doable. Montpelier, VT, is America’s smallest state capital, but it was easy to reach from our planned path, and an engaging addition at that.

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GalaxyCon Columbus 2022 Photos, Part 4 of 4: Columbus Is Our New Chicago

December 9, 2022 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A bunch of toys glued to a car roof; downtown Columbus is hazy in the distant background.

A toy army prepared to march the streets of downtown Columbus.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Each year when there isn’t a pandemic fully raging, my wife Anne and I love attending entertainment and comic conventions throughout the Midwest and occasionally a bit beyond. We’re fascinated by the spectacle of each and every in-person nexus of geek cultures that presents a confluence of comics, artists, cosplayers, hobby artifacts, rare collectibles, IP-inspired handicrafts, talented performers and celebrity guests with fandom connections of varying levels of dedication and/or awesomeness.

This past weekend’s inaugural GalaxyCon Columbus (the one in Ohio) set out more than enough bait within reasonable road-trip range that the two of us were lured out of the house once more after previous 2022 outings to Star Trek: Mission Chicago, Indiana Comic Con, and Fan Expo Chicago. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

We’ve already shared all our stories from the Convention Center grounds apart from a few photo outtakes, but we’d be remiss to neglect the fun times we had in and around the neighborhood. Our third stop in town this year was at least as stimulating as the first two. Longtime MCC readers will recall when we used to find ourselves at Chicago cons a few times every year, up until the pandemic ruined everything for a while. This year Columbus has gone above and beyond in catching our straying eyes and luring us eastward instead of northward.

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Our 2022 Road Trip #19: Buy Buy Burlington

November 7, 2022 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Big Joe Burrell statue in Burlington, Vermont

A 2010 statue of Vermont jazz legend Big Joe Burrell, who played with the likes of B.B. King, Count Basie, and Phish.

We’re not high-end shoppers who get caught anywhere near boutiques, jewelers, perfumeries, fashion trendsetters, or home decor artisans unless they happen to be next door to the retailers we’d rather visit. And by “we” I especially mean “I”. Anne’s collecting habits are modest bordering on spartan, whereas I’m the one on the lookout for brick-and-mortar purveyors who cater to my hobbies and pop culture interests. Fortunately Burlington had just the district for us.

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The Ex-Capital Birthday Weekend, Part 2 of 10: Welcome to Corydon

October 28, 2022 By in Indiana, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
glass pumpkin in sunshine!

A glass pumpkin for the autumn occasion at Zimmerman Art Glass in Corydon.

Okay, prologue aside, now we get to October 14th’s primary objective.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

In addition to our annual road trips, my wife Anne and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our respective birthdays together traveling to some new place or attraction as a short-term road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on those most wondrous days, partly to explore areas we’ve never experienced before. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

In October 2022 Anne turned 52. Indiana offers no shortage of tourist attractions for history aficionados like her. We’ve visited quite a few of those over the years, but this year we felt it was time to check off one of the Hoosier State’s biggest trivia answers: Corydon, our original state capital before Indianapolis…

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