“Final Night”

A State Fair sketch

By Linda Wing

A preponderance of red lentils and green split peas provides the color in this sliver of the State Fair, otherwise so cotton candy gaudy and throbbing with Midway neon; here the palette is modest and earthy, chock full of colors a cow would eat, or an insect, and a squirrel would call this show a catered buffet, munch artistically, collaborate and leave his squirrel mark on a splendid portrait of a jazz great or someone’s beloved pet dog.

It’s an ephemeral art, and even the woman who hands out prizes uses words like “crazy” (in a nice way) when she forks over goodies and fan mail, checkmarks each kook who trickles in to pick up their baby, the evidence of a peculiar winter spent shopping for the perfect tiny seeds and pushing them around with a toothpick.

The people who learned to knit instead are in a different building, a block down from the people who learned to paint.

This tribe is different, just on the edge of feral, working endlessly on art that isn’t capitalized . . . .