What’s in the Fair poster this year? Quite a lot – I had a field day with the Fair’s chosen theme of “Dig In!” The theme works on several levels – you can dig in to a delicious dish of Fair food, you can dig in to plant or to harvest our famous giant vegetables, you can dig into the history of the Fair and come up with buried treasure. Since this year is the 80th anniversary of the Matanuska Colony Project which established the town of Palmer as a farming community, and which led very directly to the establishment of the Fair in 1936, I wanted to highlight the agricultural roots of the Fair. This year’s poster shows the Alaska State Fair much as it is: a blossoming riot of colors and flavors that springs up at the end of every summer in a field near Palmer. Like the giant vegetables, the Fair was planted there on purpose and thrives in the rich soil and unique conditions of the place, and its flavor comes from where it grows. Dig into a bowl of stew at Bushes’ Bunches in the shadow of Farm Exhibits and you’ll be tasting the legacy of the colonists and homesteaders who cleared and planted the Valley – likewise if you watch Alaska Far Away in the Wineck Barn, or tour the Eckert Garden or the 4-H exhibits – or even if you use an ATM or admire the lights on the midway (Matanuska Valley Federal Credit Union and Matanuska Electric Association are member-owned cooperatives which grew out of the Colony). Dig into the Colony and you’ll find it grew out of seeds planted by pre-1935 homesteaders and by researchers at the Matanuska Experiment Station, part of the University of Alaska system – ask about that at the UAA Mat-Su College booth and see what they can tell you. The homesteaders followed the prospectors, who trekked from Knik up to the Talkeetnas seeking mineral wealth; their legacy at the Fair is in the little rock and mineral booths, and in the major mining and energy companies that are often big sponsors of events. The prospectors and homesteaders entered a landscape of Mesozoic rocks carved and pulverized by glaciers into a rich river valley, and inhabited by Dena’ina and Ahtna people who, along with Native groups from around the state, are at the Fair today drumming and dancing and selling crafts and food. All of this made Palmer the sort of community that would start up a Fair and keep it growing, where the whole state gathers each end of summer, where you can see Athabaskan storytelling and Yupik dances next to Russian icons and Guatemalan jewelry, eat Alaskan stew or seafood or sample culinary traditions from around the world. There’s much more to the Fair than can ever go into a single painting, but I hope this year’s poster helps people think about what’s “underground,” and how who we are and what we do today grows out of what came before.
Here are some things to look for in the poster:
•Alaskan prehistory – a Pachyrhinosaurus skull, the K/T boundary, a woolly mammoth
•Stone adze head and arrowhead
•I did paint in a more recent Dena'ina arrow based on one in an exhibit at the Anchorage Museum, though it doesn't show up well at all
•Rock pick, gold pan, and gold (and Yukon Golds)
•Plow blade and spade
•Matanuska Maid glass milk bottle
•Bingles
•Max Sherrod’s spectacles
(Max Sherrod was a nurse with the Colony, and namesake of my elementary school, who started the Fair tradition of growing giant cabbages. His glasses are among the artifacts at the Colony House Museum.)
•Kennedy campaign button
(The only time to date that a presidential candidate has bothered campaigning in Alaska was JFK’s visit to the Alaska State Fair in 1960, for the first presidential election after Alaska became a state. My friends’ grandfather was mayor of Palmer and got to ride in the car with Kennedy to the fairgrounds, then located downtown where the Pioneers’ Home is now. The car got stuck in the mud and the men had to get out and push.)
•Blue and gold pin commemorating the 50th anniversary of Alaska statehood
(I was working as signmaker for the Fair in 2008, so I wound up at the big statehood celebration on opening day of the Fair. There was an address by the governor, words from local luminaries, and music from Hobo Jim. My friend from California was amazed that the whole audience at the woodlot could sing along to the Alaska Flag Song. Evidently, other places, it’s unusual to know the state song by heart.)
•Alaska state quarter
(It’s the bright silver bit; I don’t have a small enough brush to make the bear and salmon actually legible at that scale. Fun fact about the Alaska quarter: it was introduced in 2008, and there was going to be a launching ceremony at the Colony Stage with the governor. Governor Palin didn’t show up that day. Instead, by afternoon, the first batch of “McCain-Palin” T-shirts appeared for sale on the Red Trail, and we’d entered one of the strangest seasons ever for Alaskan politics.)
•Forget-me-nots (AK state flower)
•Moose antler
(There is a moose reference in each Fair poster I’ve done, as a nod to my art mentor Brad Hughes, the grand master of Alaska State Fair posters who created the popular Fair mascot “Moosey.”)
•Chicken and rabbit
•A “fiddlehead” fern
•Flowers made out of cotton candy, fried onion, oysters, a blue ribbon, lollipops, peach pie and ice cream, Yupik dance fans, balloons, a Ferris wheel, a trumpet, the Squirrel Cages ride, and the wheel from the Rat Races
•and, of course, Pioneer Peak
Here are some things to look for in the poster:
•Alaskan prehistory – a Pachyrhinosaurus skull, the K/T boundary, a woolly mammoth
•Stone adze head and arrowhead
•I did paint in a more recent Dena'ina arrow based on one in an exhibit at the Anchorage Museum, though it doesn't show up well at all
•Rock pick, gold pan, and gold (and Yukon Golds)
•Plow blade and spade
•Matanuska Maid glass milk bottle
•Bingles
•Max Sherrod’s spectacles
(Max Sherrod was a nurse with the Colony, and namesake of my elementary school, who started the Fair tradition of growing giant cabbages. His glasses are among the artifacts at the Colony House Museum.)
•Kennedy campaign button
(The only time to date that a presidential candidate has bothered campaigning in Alaska was JFK’s visit to the Alaska State Fair in 1960, for the first presidential election after Alaska became a state. My friends’ grandfather was mayor of Palmer and got to ride in the car with Kennedy to the fairgrounds, then located downtown where the Pioneers’ Home is now. The car got stuck in the mud and the men had to get out and push.)
•Blue and gold pin commemorating the 50th anniversary of Alaska statehood
(I was working as signmaker for the Fair in 2008, so I wound up at the big statehood celebration on opening day of the Fair. There was an address by the governor, words from local luminaries, and music from Hobo Jim. My friend from California was amazed that the whole audience at the woodlot could sing along to the Alaska Flag Song. Evidently, other places, it’s unusual to know the state song by heart.)
•Alaska state quarter
(It’s the bright silver bit; I don’t have a small enough brush to make the bear and salmon actually legible at that scale. Fun fact about the Alaska quarter: it was introduced in 2008, and there was going to be a launching ceremony at the Colony Stage with the governor. Governor Palin didn’t show up that day. Instead, by afternoon, the first batch of “McCain-Palin” T-shirts appeared for sale on the Red Trail, and we’d entered one of the strangest seasons ever for Alaskan politics.)
•Forget-me-nots (AK state flower)
•Moose antler
(There is a moose reference in each Fair poster I’ve done, as a nod to my art mentor Brad Hughes, the grand master of Alaska State Fair posters who created the popular Fair mascot “Moosey.”)
•Chicken and rabbit
•A “fiddlehead” fern
•Flowers made out of cotton candy, fried onion, oysters, a blue ribbon, lollipops, peach pie and ice cream, Yupik dance fans, balloons, a Ferris wheel, a trumpet, the Squirrel Cages ride, and the wheel from the Rat Races
•and, of course, Pioneer Peak
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