For over seventy-five years the Evansville Museum of Arts, History, and Science has hosted one of the most prestigious juried art competitions in the region, the Mid-States Art Exhibition. As the Virginia G. Schroeder Curator of Art (curator of art at Evansville’s largest museum and strongest permanent collection of art), I took it upon myself to merge the fine arts with the culinary arts and so “AJ’s Fall Fest Challenge” was born.
Did you know that the Fall Fest is the second largest outdoor street festival in the country behind Mardi Gras? The gentleman who just t-boned my beautiful 2010 Honda CRV EX-L outside Pennylane Coffee on the morning of October 3rd proceeded to tell me this less than five minutes after the accident. To his credit it was the first day of the Fall Fest and while we awkwardly waited for the cops to arrive, I told him about The Challenge. Eat one thing from the Fall Fest everyday during the week and review it. How many people go everyday to eat (that aren’t volunteering in one of the booths)? It can’t be many for a number of reasons. #1 - it’s bad for your health. Everything is fried, a dessert, or bbq’d meat. #2-navigating the crowds and parking can make you question why you’re doing this. Sure, you can pay for parking and by-pass that problem. But overcoming the challenge of finding street parking somewhat close and beating the system is worth it.
Since artists were dropping off their work for the 61st Mid-States Art Exhibition (on display now through March 19, 2023 and most pieces are available for purchase) the same week as the Fallfest, I was able to recruit a few to help me on the journey.
Myself and my camera guy (shoutout Andrew) met our first guest Holly Aesen, a glass artist from Indianapolis, on Franklin right before noon. I started listing off booths for us to visit and before I could finish saying “deep fried s’mores” Holly had made her decision. Watch the review.
One question I asked Holly that’s hard to hear in the video is when did she know she had a talent in glass making/blowing? A lot of creative people recognize early on that they have proclivity towards drawing, painting, or constructing. When a little kid draws a flower and it looks like a flower and not a bunch of squiggly lines, you can see that they have something. How many six year olds are playing with glass? She answered by saying she grew up learning how to create with a lot of different mediums but it wasn’t until the last five years or so that she picked up glass making. It’s a lot different than the traditional painting or drawing or sculpture but she’s obsessed with that part of it.
Day 2 started a lot smoother than Day 1 since no one slammed into my car. Cyrus, the museum’s director of development, had never been to the Fall Fest so he eagerly volunteered to be my camera guy. We met Tabatha Chinn and Karlee Barton, two local artists whose collaborative piece “Smorgasbord Delight” is a large-scale still life depicting a picnic table right before people start to dig in. I asked them what it's like to work with someone else on a painting. Do they worry about the other person peaking over their shoulder, getting ready to make changes once they leave? Or does someone make a comment and the other dismiss it because they don’t know what they’re talking about? Both of them gave resounding “no’s” and mentioned how they listen and work with each other. More often than not, one will make a mark that leaves the other thinking, “that just pulled everything together.”
In my second attempt to divide the internet I asked if they had any hot takes on Fall. Find out what we said and watch the review on Germania Maenacor’s Kraut Balls.
Wednesday was for the boys of the Museum, no girls allowed. Cyrus, Tom (chief curator and curator of history), Randy (maintenance technician), and I made the trek were lucky to find street parking by the Mead Johnson lot. Fortunately, I wasn’t driving so if we had to settle for paid parking, I wasn’t going to complain. In terms of food this was one of my favorite days. As soon as I saw St. Paul’s Jim’s Famous BBQ trailer I went over and got a pulled pork sandwich. Having grown up at St. Paul’s and volunteering countless times to pull bbq for Jim, my unbiased opinion is that it’s the greatest food item in the 101 year history of the Fall Festival. 7/6 Picassos. I didn’t think the day could get any better until I saw the menu at booth #1. Pumpkin Bread Pudding. The line was six people deep and all of them were in line for the bbq pork sandwich, but I didn’t care, I had to get some of that pudding. I scarfed it down in 45 seconds. 5.9/5 Picassos.
This is the part of the blog/week where I’m just going to review some of the entries accepted into Mid-States because by the middle of Fall Fest week it gets way too busy and chaotic to film something that relies on hearing the words coming out of people’s mouths, and not the screams, hollers, and shrieks you’ll hear on Franklin.
While I don’t have any say in the judging of the pieces, since I’m the curator and the person that sets the competition up, I get to see all the entries and I was maybe the most excited to see this one in person. It’s also in the running for “Snub of the Exhibition” since it wasn’t awarded a purchase or merit award. Riggi draws a woman with meticulous detail and attention paid to the varying textures found throughout the piece. Her hair, skin, lips, sweater, and bandana contain their own qualities and characteristics that add to the striking appearance of the woman. But her gaze centers the whole piece.
By Thursday of Fall Fest the crowds are at peak capacity and rather than take on the challenge alone, I asked my parents if they wanted to go. And by asking my parents if they wanted to go, I mean do they want to pick me up, pay for parking and my food and drinks? Because they’re great parents and I’m the only kid they have regular access to, they jumped at the opportunity. As soon as we got there my mom went straight to St. Paul’s booth and we got another bbq sandwich. For those counting at home, that was my second of the week. I’d eat one everyday if I could. After meandering down the street trying to slide by people and saying endless amounts of opes and excuse me’s, we got to the USI’s varsity club where my dad got a steak sandwich.
Since all I had to eat was the bbq sandwich, I’m going to rate the budlight bottles we had at Bud’s Rocking Bar. It’s one thing to have a budlight, but it’s another while sitting outside on a warm fall evening enjoying the sights, smells, and sounds of the Fall Festival. The sun was starting to set, people were getting off work. It felt like the world had finally gotten back to normal after the last two years. 5.5/6 Picassos. I doubt Picasso ever drank a budlight, he seems like a guy that only drinks wine or the hard stuff. Which I respect. But a cold budlight at the Fall Festival? Masterpiece.
Hammerstein’s Ketamine Dreaming takes on a different vibe than the other pieces in the show. Almost haunting is the best way to describe how I feel when I stand in front of this piece. Hammerstein’s use of the loose and free application of paint creates an environment parallel to the state of being someone may find themselves in after taking ketamine. For those who don’t know what ketamine is, google it. The skeleton placed to the left changes the whole direction of the narrative from someone receiving medical care to death possibly being literally on the table.
Last day of the challenge (Saturday doesn’t count since I don’t work at the Museum on Saturday’s and the point of the whole challenge was to find a way to go to the Fall Festival during work (don’t tell my boss, Mary). By Friday I didn’t have the patience to mess with the lunchtime crowds and since the westside kids had the day off, I pulled a veteran move and went at 10am. My quest was to find the French Waffle, a local delicacy I discovered while perusing Evansville memories groups on Facebook.
The sun was shining, the workers were setting up the games and rides, and a good amount of people had already found their way to Franklin Street. I know every place in the world experiences a sunrise but there’s something different about the ones we get here. I can’t exactly put a finger to it, but when that bright golden yellow reflects off the concrete during a chilly October morning and the smell of fried dough wafts through the air, that’s a sort of beauty you only find in Evansville, Indiana. The lovely people at Reitz’s varsity club handed me my waffle and I found a spot on some bleachers. Just as day 1 started with powdered sugar all over my shirt and pants, it ended the same way. Sweet, crunchy, flaky, and symmetrically shaped; the French Waffle earned a solid 4.2/6 Picassos.
The last piece I’m going to review is by Vincennes, Indiana artist Fernando Lozano. Portrait of Janna Arndt is a digital print created with a pattern of colors and designs that make it stand out among the other entries. Almost life size, Lozano gets you to look intensely over the canvas as each square is different from the next. When two patterns such as the background and plaid suit differ, they usually clash but Lozano’s composition and color choice allow each to stand out and work together rather than conflict.
Below are the winners of our purchase and merit awards. The difference between the two are that purchase award winners are purchased for the museum collection (get it?) and merit award winners are awarded money without the purchase. We’re very excited to include this year’s group of purchase award winnersin the new Mid-States Art and Craft Permanent Gallery set to open this summer.
