{"id":32461,"date":"2017-08-23T14:05:02","date_gmt":"2017-08-23T21:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/?p=32461"},"modified":"2017-08-24T06:46:10","modified_gmt":"2017-08-24T13:46:10","slug":"at-the-county-fair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/23\/at-the-county-fair\/","title":{"rendered":"At the county fair"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s county fair time. When I was 14 all that meant was riding the Tilt-a-Whirl two dozen times and getting to see big-name entertainment in the giant grandstands. That was in a mega-urban area and if people still entered their home-canned goods or their market hogs, I was unaware of it (and much too sophisticated to care).<\/p>\n

It’s a little different when you live in a county that’s basically one vast rural neighborhood. Here, the main stage holds an audience of 100 on plastic lawn chairs and “entertainment” might mean a polka band or a little girl giving a presentation on how to raise rabbits. But everybody … I mean everybody … enters something or participates in some way. <\/p>\n

Furrydoc might dazzle ’em at the flower show (after conducting vet checks of 4H animals). I can’t avoid running into somebody I know working various booths. The lady who used to cut my hair runs the equestrian events. A friendly acquaintance who shares a name with me always gets blue ribbons on her quilts. So naturally, I have to join in this fun.<\/p>\n

This year, with new drawings and paintings in hand, I decided I was going to aim for knocking the reigning art champion off his (not very high, considering the stakes) perch. I told my friend who owns Brandy the black dog<\/a> that I believed her portrait had a shot at winning the Grand Champion ribbon.<\/p>\n

Didn’t happen.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nBrandy scooped up a blue, a special judges award, and a reserve champion ribbon. So I’m hardly complaining.<\/p>\n

And I did<\/em> knock Mr. Champion (a really nice guy, but not all that good an artist) off his perch. I took the Grand Champion ribbon … for a painting I almost didn’t bother to enter, and which you guys didn’t think that much of when I posted it here. It was hanging right next to Brandy in the exhibit.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So thanks, FishOrMan, for inspiring me to do The Colors of the Palouse<\/a>, which took a blue, a special, another reserve champion*, and finally the top prize in the adult division of the show.<\/p>\n

Can’t say I understood the judges’ choice. “Palouse” was a quick exercise that took about three hours and to my eyes was loaded with imperfections. Brandy was a labor of love and the best piece of art I’ve ever done.<\/p>\n

When I asked the superintendent of the art building why that choice, she pointed out that the chief judge clearly had a “thing” for abstract images with subtle, shifting colors. (The top juvenile winner, a few steps away, was simply a collection of interesting color gradations, beautifully done and displayed.)<\/p>\n

Then she said something that gave me a smile. “The judge stood there with the Grand Champion ribbon in her hand. She started to put it on the dog … then moved it over to the landscape … then back to the dog … then back to the landscape … then back to the dog … then finally she put it on the landscape.”<\/p>\n

It may be time for me to move on to bigger and better things with my art. I’ve been reluctant to take that next step, whatever it might be. But I’m having more fun at the county fair as a grownup than I ever did on that Tilt-a-Whirl.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

* Which they proably should have removed once they decided to award the grand prize to that picture. But the sup felt we were entitled to all the ribbons we received “on the way up the ladder.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s county fair time. When I was 14 all that meant was riding the Tilt-a-Whirl two dozen times and getting to see big-name entertainment in the giant grandstands. That was in a mega-urban area and if people still entered their home-canned goods or their market hogs, I was unaware of it (and much too sophisticated to care). It’s a little different when you live in a county that’s basically one vast rural neighborhood. Here, the main stage holds an audience of 100 on plastic lawn chairs and “entertainment” might mean a polka band or a little girl giving a presentation…<\/p>\n

Continue readingAt the county fair<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-aesthetics","category-dogs-and-cats","category-rural-and-small-town-living","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32461"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32476,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32461\/revisions\/32476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}