The Corn Palace – Folk Art on a Grand Scale, Mitchell SD [July 12, 2016]

This year's Corn Palace is dedicated to Rock and Roll, represented in corn

The Corn Palace in Mitchell SD is an impressive piece of folk art. 

Willie Nelson represented in cobs of corn. The fluffy trim are sheaves of wheat and rye.

And heeeere's Elvis!

Every summer, after harvest, they put up a new design in corn on two sides of the outside of the Corn Palace building.  The design that we saw was a tribute to Rock-and-Roll called Rock of Ages.  There were portraits of Willie Nelson, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and other musicians – all in cobs of corn, using a palate of 10 colors of corn.  Around the outside of each panel are bundles of wheat and rye.

The long wall representing different rock artists or moments, all in corn, wheat and rye.

Close up.

The Mitchell SD Corn Palace started as an effort to attract settlers to Mitchell over neighboring cities.  Other towns had corn palaces and other harvest celebrations, Mitchell’s needed to be grander.  So they built a building big enough to house an auditorium and put geometric designs made of corn on the outside.  They had a festival and concerts in celebration of the new design on the building and harvest each year.   In one of the early years, they invited John Philip Sousa to come, and he was so impressed by the display of interest that he performed 3 concerts a day for the time he was there. 

Domes

Inside are permanent corn displays depicting South Dakota history.

Over the years, they built larger and larger buildings to be the Corn Palace and to hold larger events in the auditorium.  They added onion shaped domes to the roofline.  The designs on the outside began to be more representational.  On the inside of the current Corn Palace, there are permanent panels representing episodes in South Dakota history.  The building is used for concerts, and for high school basketball games.  It smells faintly of popcorn inside.

The corn displays are lovely - it smells a bit like pop corn inside.

So how do they do it?  There are fields outside of town that grow the different colors of corn just for this purpose.  They are separated from each other to avoid cross pollination.  Artists design the panels, and draw the designs on tar paper that is nailed to each panel on the outside walls.  The tar paper shows the outline of each section, and indicates the color of corn to use.  Artisans cut the corn with a saw to make them a uniform size, or the needed size.  They then nail the corn to the wall.

Close up of wheat, rye and corn

Mitchell is also the town where Russ’ Dad was born 100 years ago this spring.  We met a friendly police office, who directed us to the town hospital.  Sure enough, there was a wing of the hospital that could have been standing at that time.  Perhaps that was where Marshall Smith was born.

Now aren't you impressed?