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AT THE FAIR

Gardeners bring produce to a competition in the exhibit hall, and 4-H kids lead animals around the show ring. There is a pie auction, a skillet toss, and a demolition derby. In the evening teenagers promenade on the midway, riding the Scrambler and eating fried dough. The show has come to town and with it a chance at the spotlight, a once-a-year opportunity to elicit desire and admiration.

Many still-life paintings record not just the harvest’s bounty but also the proprietary boasting that accompanies it. The mood at the fair is similar, as are some of its formal devices. Vegetables and animals and cheap plastic toys are all carefully arranged in recurring patterns like some extravagant horn of plenty. Though the fair is touted as a celebration of rural life, visitors often see the fruits without the labor. Dairy cows, washed and brushed, parade through the fresh sawdust of a show ring led by children dressed in white. Sore backs, manure lagoons, and money worries usually remain on the farm.

Propaganda and partisanship are rife, but often the presentations are makeshift, as if the dedication required to create a seamless illusion is not worth the effort. The bingo hall has colorful striped table coverings, but its walls are made of exposed 2 x 4’s. Perfect tomatoes lie on Styrofoam meat trays. Perhaps the self-assertive urge is tempered by a practicality and distrust of hyperbole. An eight-hundred-pound pumpkin is impressive, yet beyond the competition, the product is nearly worthless, useful only as fertilizer.

All Images and Text © Thomas Birtwistle 2008.
All Rights Reserved.