Football Crop Art

INTRODUCTION

The Minnesota State Fair was cancelled this year because of the COVID-19 outbreak. This was kind of a big deal for my family. It’s a tradition for us to attend the fair every year. And it’s not just our family. The Minnesota State Fair is known as “The Great Minnesota Get-Together” for good reason. It’s the largest state fair in the U.S. by average daily attendance.

Part of the fair’s allure is its quirkiness. For example, every year the winner of the Minnesota Dairy Princess Program – the so-called Princess Kay of the Milky Way – gets to have a sculpture of her head carved out of a 90-pound block of butter. Another example is crop art. Crop art at the Minnesota State Fair is when an artist creates a mosaic-like work of art using only seeds and panicles from plants that can be grown in Minnesota. It’s a spectacle to see all the diverse and contrasting images on display.

So, when the fair was cancelled, a huge void was left to be filled. That’s when my daughter stepped in. “Why not have our own fair?” she asked. And so, we did. After weeks of planning, a date was set aside for our own Mini Minnesota State Fair. We enjoyed milk shakes, hot out of the oven Sweet Martha’s cookies, pork chops on a stick, Minneapple pies, deep fried Twinkies, mini donuts, funnel cakes…you name it!

And what was my contribution to the fair? I tried my hand at crop art!

HOW THE HELL DO YOU CREATE CROP ART?

I had no idea how to make crop art, but how hard could it be? I didn’t even bother searching for help online. I figured I’d just glue seed to some sort of sturdy mounting board. It was all the other questions I needed to sort out: What design to use, whether to utilize a picture frame, what kinds of seed to incorporate, etc.

From the get-go, I decided that I’d find a cheap-ass frame and glue the seeds directly inside the frame to some sort of thick illustration board. For glue I’d use the ubiquitous Elmer’s Glue-All. All systems go!

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