Outside of the tent we are running out of color, at least the dramatically named ones. We are moving into the drawing, structural season. The surface is grids, roads and the limits of property. Grids, the gift of the ancients, are favored structures by most artists and farmers (satellite x and y’s coordinate their behemoths). All is moving toward tumbled carved blacks, dirty and dusty whites rubbed and overlaid, linear leggy weedy gray gestures; some dull, some sharp.
Our tent, close to the path of America’s Mother Road, is holding a gathering of venerable artistics. The gathering of artistic enfant terribles and the subsequent museum, is an new idea for the prairie and a type of hope for the artistics. Some may appear a bit weird or disconcerting, like our tent out on the cornland. But the prairie is not a strange or weird land, even stripped of its’ green, even with the behemoths (the combine harvesters) devouring endless acres of grain. This place is visually sensible, a continuity with subtle ornamentation; old and new grain elevators developed and discarded due to technical (financial) reasons, various outbuildings and houses, and winds that blow in and blow out. Things change.
Did you ever hear that 1920’s song, “How yeh goin’ to keep ’em down on the farm, once the’ve seen Paree?”
Bring in some art? Some dancing girls? Some champagne instead of beer? Paint the wind turbines rouge, add some blinking lights, reopen Rt.66? 
Well, maybe, fewer people are now attached to harvesting (so no one in the houses), so Autumn Festivals are sponsored on social media to retrieve those who went to “Paree”, or even Peoria. Some steal stalks or ears for decoration (they are of paltry singular value but stealing less in town could get one shot). However the golden ears bring up primal agrarian memories.
A few visitors may show up at the Temporary Museum of Enfant Terrible Culture for some color, but, than again, ” How yeh gonna get um ta pay for art, once the’ve seen for free?”
Getting corn and art for free is one thing, what about power…next Saturday.
Anachronistic Anarchist by Herb Eaton 