This weekend, we took a trip 30 minutes from Lawrence to visit the Maple Leaf Festival in Baldwin, KS. It’s what you’d expect from a small town arts and crafts fair, but it’s quaint and the weather was great, so we had a lot of fun.

Here’s a quick description from the official website:
“Started in 1958, the Maple Leaf Festival began as a community event inspired by Dr. Ivan Boyd, a biology professor at Baker University. He noted that the third weekend in October was the optimum time to view the changing colors of the Maple Leaves in the area and the perfect time to celebrate the successful harvest.”

This was the spokesman for the whole event. He’s a funny guy who made announcements and gave out free shirts to whomever could name the song that was playing over the loudspeakers. I should brush up on my oldies and country music knowledge for next year.

They had a few carnival rides. I love the visual overload on the midway. It’s amazing how you can see certain fonts and colors together and instantly think “carnival”.

Adult rides . . .

. . . and kid rides.

Carnivals can be pretty creepy and this monkey is no exception. On a moderately related note, there’s a great fiction book about a family of circus freaks called “Geek Love”, by Katherine Dunn. I highly recommend it if you’re into that kind of thing.

Like many small town fairs, they had a petting zoo with camels, pigs, small horses, this goat, and a lot of other things. The animal rights guy in me has a lot to say about this kind of thing, but I’ll leave it alone for now.

In terms of actual art at the fair, it was more in the “craft” category. They had some great photography that you could buy and it was mostly comprised of Kansas landscapes which can be some pretty stunning stuff. Outside of that, there was a lot of country themed “stuff” like these hand painted mailboxes (note the young festival love) . . .

These lovely signs . . .

There was also some “live” art going on which is always interesting to watch. . .

And of course “fair food” which is a culinary art in a world by itself!

---

File under: Art