GINGER ARCHITECTURE AND CARTOONING
It’s time for another List of the Month, something appropriate to the holiday season. So here are the names of the gingerbread “houses” in the Vermont Folklife Center’s 9th annual competition this year:
Hockey Game
Downtown for the Holidays
Merry Antmas
Town Hall Theater
Snowmen Village
Vermont – No Place Like Home
The Merry Berry Homestead
Winter Wonderland
Onions!
Sweet, Sweet Skating
A New England Christmas
Hansel and Gretl
Addison Barn
Blizzard of Oz
Our Map of the Woods
Life in the Trees
Dr. Doolittle and His Animals
Where Gingerbread Kids go in the Summer
(no name)
Candy Castle
An After Supper Sugar High
The Gingerbread House
Cottage by a Stream
Tiki Hut
We are Santa’s Elves
Fantasy Bear Island
The Golden Mosque
Dashing Away in the Snow…
(no name)
Cabin Fever
The King of Egypt
The 5 Seasons
Vermont Family Christmas
The Crimson Tide
Tennis Match
Spooks of Fun
Alleluia
Two Imaginations
Jeepers Creepers
Garden Japanese Tea House
The Gingerbread Showdown
Reflection
Fish Tank
(no name)
Christmas Doesn’t Come from a Store
Mailbox House
The Snowman’s Christmas Tipi
Mission Accomplished
Smurfvillage
Welcome to Outer Space
Theme Park Closed for the Winter
Close Encounters of a Sweet Kind
The Sugar-Plum Tree
The Christmas Bus
Just at a glance, it’s easy to see that gingerbread creations have gone way past visions of sugarplums. Arguably it isn’t that much of a stretch to do a Tiki House when so many Vermont houses now have front paths lit by tiki lights, and having onions on top of model silos could be called quintessentially northern by those who know Russia’s “onion-domed” cathedrals.
But then you come to “Merry Antmas,” whose back story is that a colony of ants has found a muffin dropped onto a sidewalk, and they are coming in lines to decorate it with other stuff they’ve found. Or a pirate ship flying the Jolly Roger, or a creemee stand, or…
The rules have changed, and for the better. The Folklife Center has only two: the size of the base can’t exceed certain dimensions, and everything above the base has to be edible.
House after house was boring. Now, with some spice added to the sugar, it’s imagination after imagination, more often than not bringing a family together to create a memory as well as something to share with the community.
But enough talk. The point of this blog is to share some pictures from the Folklife Center—including a few from the gift shop, which is an exhibit in itself at any season and well worth a look the next time you are stuck for a gift that is unique and has character and will be appreciated for years.
Or at least I'm going to try to put in some pictures. The last time I tried, something didn't work--probably having to do with me, not Typepad. I've read what there is to read in Help, and I'll do my best. If I have to bail out and just send in the words, I promise I'll find out how from someone and deliver a "rain check" (snow note?) batch of gingerpics.
There it goes! Life's little lessons: I wasn't waiting long enough. But I guess that's the message of Christmas.
Are you saying, "I could do better than that!"? That's the American spirit, even in gingerbread. Just don't forget that after next year's Turkey hangover wears off.
I'll be putting a lot more art exhibition pictures here, and some concert pictures, too, as time goes. Not only is a picture worth a thousand words, it can take up hundreds of them in newspaper space that ought to be used to alert you, dear reader, to major occurrences around the world.
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