Corn Palace - aka The World's Largest Birdfeeder

If you will be traveling anywhere near Mitchell, South Dakota in July/August, you might want to take the time to stop in. Every summer, after the corn harvest, they take dried corn cobs (with the corn kernels still on!) and create a wonderful mural on the outside of the Corn palace, covering the entire building. Every year the mural is different.

The original Mitchell Corn Palace (known as "The Corn Belt Exposition") was built in 1892 to showcase the rich soil of South Dakota and encourage people to settle in the area. It was a wooden castle structure on Mitchell's Main Street. In 1904–1905, the city of Mitchell mounted a challenge to the city of Pierre in an unsuccessful attempt to replace it as the state capital of South Dakota. As part of this effort, the Corn Palace was rebuilt in 1905. In 1921 the Corn Palace was rebuilt once again, with a design by the architectural firm Rapp and Rapp of Chicago. Moorish domes and minarets were added in 1937, giving the Palace the distinct appearance that it has today.
The exterior corn murals are replaced and redesigned each year with a new theme. The designs are created by local artists. From 1948–1971 the artist Oscar Howe designed the panels. Calvin Schultz designed the murals from 1977–2002. Since 2003, the murals have been designed by Cherie Ramsdell. No new mural was created in 2006 due to an extreme drought.

What an imagination!

Someone has waaaaaay too much time on their - but lots of imagination!!

Kissing Strawberries


Hot Pepper Dog


Bunch of Happy Grapes


Bell Pepper Frogs


Fresh Orange


Fish


Duck


Cauliflower, Grapefruit, Kiwi and Carrot


Banana Octopus


Banana Dog


Avocado Pig

Kaziah Hancock - Preserving the memory of our fallen heroes

Kaziah Hancock preserves the memories of our fallen heroes by painting a portrait of them and sending it to their family - never accepting any money, all at her expense. Click here to see the video.

Favorite Artist - Charles Wysocki

Let me introduce you to my favorite artist - Charles Wysocki.

His inspiration for his work were from his visits to places such as Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Cape Cod, Boston, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.

He started out in commercial art. At night and on the weekends, he worked on his Americana/primitive paintings. After he had a one-man show at which he sold every painting in this style, he decided to leave commercial art for good and just focus on his Americana art. For most of the 1960’s he made a good living off of the original paintings he sold.

In 1972 he started his relationship with AMCAL. Together they published the first Americana Calendar. It has been in production ever since. AMCAL has been licensing his images on various products for close to 30 years.

Then in 1979, Charles published his first limited edition print “Fox Run” with The Greenwich Workshop. His published numerous prints with them during this time from 1979-1993.

He moved to Lake Arrowhead, a mountain resort in the Southern California area. Sadly, he passed away in 2002.

In 1998, on a grand vacation circling the United States, one of our stops was on Bennington, Vermont, where Grandma Moses is from. I visited the Grandma Moses museum. Lo and behold, right there in the lobby was a massive Charles Wysocki original painting. I think it was the size of the painting that was overwhelming.

To see more of his work, visit Charles Wysocki website.

I love working jigsaw puzzles and I think I have every one of the jigsaw puzzles of his work.

I will post photos of his work occasionally here in my blog.