PorkChopSandwiches
09-01-2015, 05:10 PM
http://i.imgur.com/53wQmtn.jpg
It took Nick Rindo just a few hours to throw together a crop art portrait of Bill Cosby. The medium: canola seeds -- a variant of which is also known as rapeseed.
It took just a day for the State Fair to give it the boot.
After a flurry of complaints by fairgoers about the subject matter and taste, the portrait of the comedian -- who has been accused of drugging and sexually assaulting dozens of women -- was pulled from the Agriculture Horticulture Building.
"It's somewhere in a corner of shame," Rindo said Monday.
The 37-year-old Richfield artist, a software designer by day, isn't heartbroken. He was mildly surprised the Fair accepted the submission in the first place.
It wasn't meant to be a masterwork or win a ribbon. Rindo spent far more time on his other seed art submission, a portrait of the Star Trek character Spock made to honor deceased actor Leonard Nimoy (that one is still up).
By coincidence, the Cosby portrait mirrored another done in 1995 by renowned crop artist Lillian Colton. Canola was featured in that version, too -- although it came long before the accusations against Cosby became widely known.
Subversive wordplay aside, Rindo mentioned rapeseed in parentheses in the portrait's label to make it clear he wasn't simply a Cosby fan.
"The point was just to see, would there be outrage?" he said. "Would there be people talking about it? Would it even get through?"
It did and it didn't: Ron Kelsey, the Fair's longtime crop art superintendent, gave the portrait the green light but put a piece of tape over the word "rapeseed.
"
His reasoning, he said: "We call everything canola in this country."
Rindo wasn't sure that helped -- "now it looks like I just painted a portrait of Bill Cosby with canola seeds," he said, which isn't the message he hoped to send.
Either way, emails started rolling in to Fair administrators complaining about the portrait.
Rindo said a Pioneer Press story last week that made mention of the Cosby portrait and the rapeseed may have heightened the attention and backlash.
He said he was told at least one complainant accused the exhibit of being "pro-rape." Others didn't care for the subject matter in general.
After consulting with the administration, Kelsey pulled it down late Thursday or early Friday (he said he's not certain which).
Also removed: a picture of two pronto pups, one longer than the other, with a comment about size not mattering.
"It's my responsibility to look at them all and check them out," he said.
The last piece of crop art Kelsey remembers taking down before this year was a piece from many years ago made entirely of marijuana seeds.
He said it was for purely agricultural reasons: the seeds in crop art need to represent farm crops used in Minnesota. Marijuana, at the time, was not.
Rindo said he's not bothered by the fate of the portrait. In some fashion, he said, it signaled the public's rejection of Cosby.
"I think it's actually maybe the best possible scenario," he said. "Up for a day and then taken down."
It took Nick Rindo just a few hours to throw together a crop art portrait of Bill Cosby. The medium: canola seeds -- a variant of which is also known as rapeseed.
It took just a day for the State Fair to give it the boot.
After a flurry of complaints by fairgoers about the subject matter and taste, the portrait of the comedian -- who has been accused of drugging and sexually assaulting dozens of women -- was pulled from the Agriculture Horticulture Building.
"It's somewhere in a corner of shame," Rindo said Monday.
The 37-year-old Richfield artist, a software designer by day, isn't heartbroken. He was mildly surprised the Fair accepted the submission in the first place.
It wasn't meant to be a masterwork or win a ribbon. Rindo spent far more time on his other seed art submission, a portrait of the Star Trek character Spock made to honor deceased actor Leonard Nimoy (that one is still up).
By coincidence, the Cosby portrait mirrored another done in 1995 by renowned crop artist Lillian Colton. Canola was featured in that version, too -- although it came long before the accusations against Cosby became widely known.
Subversive wordplay aside, Rindo mentioned rapeseed in parentheses in the portrait's label to make it clear he wasn't simply a Cosby fan.
"The point was just to see, would there be outrage?" he said. "Would there be people talking about it? Would it even get through?"
It did and it didn't: Ron Kelsey, the Fair's longtime crop art superintendent, gave the portrait the green light but put a piece of tape over the word "rapeseed.
"
His reasoning, he said: "We call everything canola in this country."
Rindo wasn't sure that helped -- "now it looks like I just painted a portrait of Bill Cosby with canola seeds," he said, which isn't the message he hoped to send.
Either way, emails started rolling in to Fair administrators complaining about the portrait.
Rindo said a Pioneer Press story last week that made mention of the Cosby portrait and the rapeseed may have heightened the attention and backlash.
He said he was told at least one complainant accused the exhibit of being "pro-rape." Others didn't care for the subject matter in general.
After consulting with the administration, Kelsey pulled it down late Thursday or early Friday (he said he's not certain which).
Also removed: a picture of two pronto pups, one longer than the other, with a comment about size not mattering.
"It's my responsibility to look at them all and check them out," he said.
The last piece of crop art Kelsey remembers taking down before this year was a piece from many years ago made entirely of marijuana seeds.
He said it was for purely agricultural reasons: the seeds in crop art need to represent farm crops used in Minnesota. Marijuana, at the time, was not.
Rindo said he's not bothered by the fate of the portrait. In some fashion, he said, it signaled the public's rejection of Cosby.
"I think it's actually maybe the best possible scenario," he said. "Up for a day and then taken down."