THE MAGIC OF CREATIVE ARTS AT THE STATE FAIR OF TEXAS

by Lillie Miller

There is something wonderfully strange about the Creative Arts Department at the State Fair of Texas. You may go to the Fair for a corn dog, the Midway, or a giant cowboy who was Santa in his former life. But you’re really missing out if you don’t wander through the Creative Arts Building. There you’ll find quilts, a perfectly canned pickle, various paper mâché interpretations of Big Tex, black and white outhouse photography, gourd art, a watercolor of a beloved pet, antique toy collections, and of course, a giant butter sculpture. Somehow, all of it makes perfect sense.

The modern State Fair of Texas traces its beginnings to Dallas in 1886, when two rival fairs opened just a day apart. They joined forces the next year, creating the Fair we know today. From the beginning, the whole Fair was a little bit of literally everything: livestock, inventions, horse races, and elaborate and often dangerous shows. There was also the "Ladies’ Department", where women competed in baking, preserving and needlework.

That department didn’t stay neatly confined for long. By 1895, it included space for work crafted by patients at the North Texas Hospital for the Insane. In 1900, the Fair offered a miscellaneous class for men, where family relics and curios could be entered for judging. Categories continued to expand in the ever evolving Premium List (Exhibitor Handbook).

One of the more charmingly blunt categories in the 1939 Premium Book was “OLD LADIES’ WORK.” Competitors had to be past 65 years of age—and, importantly, still alive. Those who met those requirements could compete in hand or machine sewing, hemstitching, tatting, lace, crochet, knitting and embroidery.

By the 1950s, the department included textiles, foods, antiques, potted plants and handcrafts, along with significant collections loaned by museums. By 1976, the department was known as the Creative Arts Department, with 27 contests, 11 divisions and 143 classifications covering everything from antiques and artwork to photography, scale models, ceramics and quilts.

It’s easy to wonder how all of these things ended up under the same roof. But that has always been the point. Creative Arts is a place for people who make things, collect things, photograph things or simply care enough about something to enter it in a contest. It doesn’t have to be practical. It doesn’t have to be important.

The building we know today as the Creative Arts Building was built in 1936 as part of the Foods Building complex for the Texas Centennial. It later housed a wax museum before the Creative Arts Department moved in from the Women’s Building in the early 1980s. Today, it is one of those places at the Fair where you can spend considerably more time than you intended contemplating, "Could I, too, make a dress entirely out of Whataburger wrappers?"

The Fair has always drawn people from beyond Dallas, including generations of Collin County residents. A 1928 State Fair exhibitor pass belonging to Malcolm Martin, Collin County resident and my great-granduncle, offers a glimpse of that connection nearly a century ago. The Collin County History Museum’s collection also includes a beautiful and well preserved 1868 Cockscomb and Currants quilt that was awarded a blue ribbon at the fair...twice.

And long before the public walks through the Creative Arts Building, the entries have already been through quite a journey of their own. They arrive hand delivered with glue still drying, pulled in a wagon with a heap of other entries, accompanied by handwritten instructions or typed histories, and by mail. Then everything is processed and sorted for judging. After judging, ribbons are placed, non-winners pick up their pieces, and cases are decorated with the winning entries. This process takes weeks. For the contestants, the process may have started months or a year earlier at a kitchen table, workbench, or sewing machine.

That is what makes Creative Arts worth a visit. It is a little odd, a little old-fashioned and completely entertaining. Every year, people still make things, collect things and fuss over the details—and then bring them to the fair, hoping someone else will stop, take a look and say “That’s pretty wonderful.”