Maize Flounder

The Heavenly Corn Bounty (2018) Wood with Mixed Media

I got sucked into the affairs of the nation and failed to write a blog post, so here is a classic flounder sculpture I made back in 2018.  The piece is a reflection on the heavenly golden staple crop maize which fuels and feeds our nation…but it also reflects on how strange, alien, and disconcerting corn is.  The post is a way to highlight a sculpture which I made, but is also a reminder that I need to write more about maize here in the upcoming year!  For good and for ill it really is a golden staple which holds the nation together.

Also, I chose that title back in 2018, and now I can’t remember why.  Does anybody have any better suggestions? “Maize Place” maybe?

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Agricultural Product Mascots

 

The Wichita State University muscle-bound bundle of wheat

It seems like it has been a particularly long week, so how about we unwind for the weekend with some humorously bad mascots.  Ferrebeekeeper already presented a post on farmer mascots (of which there were a surfeit in this great breadbasket land of ours).  Today we concentrate instead on characters who literally are agricultural products: these mascots are just straight up agricultural commodities.  This seems like a weak concept for a dancin’ frolickin’ becostumed embodiment of team spirit, yet, once again, the rich imagination of bored small-town teams does not disappoint.   Check out these strange beings:

Captain Cornelius of ISU

Bennie the Bean, the mascot for the Indiana Soybean Alliance

Custom Handmade Chinese Cabbage Mascot (in case you want to advocate Bok Choy)

This sunflower mascot is from a hospice…so I have no idea what to make of that…

The famous Idaho potato

The Delta State University Fighting Okra is naturally from Mississippi

The Hillsboro Hops

This angry ear of corn is from Concordia College in Minnesota

Most of the rice mascots I found were racially problematic, but, since it is my favorite staple food, here is the Miami Rice Pudding Mascot (?)

The University of North Carolina School of the Arts doesn’t actually have any sports teams, but they do have a Fighting Pickle.

Yeesh, those are some rough symbols to rally around.  I’ll do some hard thinking this weekend and see you back here on Monday.  In the meantime here is an anonymous corn to see you off.

[Presented without further comment]

Iyatiku

Acoma Pueblo, the most famous Keresan pueblo and the oldest inhabited town in the USA

When the Spanish arrived in what is now New Mexico and Arizona they found the Pueblo people farming corn, squash, and beans on the dry land.  These native people built villages made up of interconnected multi-storied adobe buildings.  Although different Pueblo groups shared cultural affinity in terms of lifestyle, the languages of different groups and the religious beliefs–were so dissimilar that the Pueblos probably came from diverse backgrounds.

“Corn Dawn Mother” by Marti Fenton

One group, the Keresan Puebloes, believed that all people come originally from Shipap, a realm beneath the ground ruled by the benevolent goddess Iyatiku, who is an underworld goddess, a mother goddess, and a corn goddess all at once.  People emerge from this structured underworld when they are born and they then make their way through the hard arid world.  To help her children through mortal life, Iyatiku annually rips out her own heart and tears it into four pieces which she scatters to the north, south, east, and west where the fragments grow into maize.  Despite Iyatiku’s sacrifice and her care, people do not last in this world: they are murdered or starved or broken.  They grow old and die.  When this happens, they return once more to Iyatiku’s arms in the Shipap, the realm beneath the world where they wait to someday be born again.