ART EXISTS EVERYWHERE, even at a farm-themed event. My photos from the Rice County Steam & Gas Engines Fall Show last Saturday in rural Dundas prove that. As a creative, I view life through an artistic lens. So I’m naturally drawn to photograph items that others may not necessarily see as art.
In this photo essay, you’ll view a sampling of the “art” I discovered. I found art on vintage tractors, on clothing, at the flea market, especially at the flea market, and beyond.
Let’s start there, among market vendors selling a variety of goods ranging from toy tractors to glassware to home décor and everything in between. The art that drew my deepest interest—two massive brass sculptures of African men—sat on a flatbed trailer. They were nothing short of spectacular. Such grace. Such power in their muscular arms and legs. Truly, truly stunning. Seller Daniel Bell of Faribault, who calls himself a picker, found the matching pair in Iowa. The sculptures once supported tabletops, now missing. He’s priced each at $575. I can connect you with Dan if you’re interested.
Almost as interesting, and certainly thought-provoking in 2025, is a 1950s image of children dressed in western attire and brandishing pistols. When I reflect on that scene printed on a tray, I remember how I, too, owned a toy cap gun and played “Cowboys and Indians.” That all seems so terribly wrong now when viewing this as an adult in a world riddled by gun violence. I’m thankful for changed attitudes and perspectives about our Indigenous Peoples and about toy guns.
I spotted art on a plastic coffee mug from Minnesota Valley Canning Company featuring the Green Giant brand of GREAT BIG TENDER PEAS. The back side of the mug is imprinted with the story of the Jolly Green Giant. I should have purchased the cup, which belonged to the father of the flea market vendor. He worked at the canning company in Le Sueur until its 1995 closure. This mug is more than a mug. It’s a collectible piece of regional literary and visual art.
And then I found art on the cover and inside the Northfield Arts Guild’s 25th anniversary cookbook from 1984. Not unexpected, it features the art of rural Northfielder Fred Somers, whose work I admire.
At another vendor, I spotted a bullet-riddled cow weather vane, a form of functional rural art. And apparently a shooting target, too. I saw a horse weather vane inside a showgrounds building.
And then there were the duck decoys, the red plastic lips and the jar full of colored plastic clothespins, all viewed as art by me.
I even saw a vendor painting, freshening up the words “C’MON MAN!” on his van. He was selling mostly leather belts, an inventory purchased when a leather goods shop closed.
Elsewhere around the showgrounds, art exists also. I discovered it on commemorative buttons, stickers and signs. Inside the 1912 farmhouse a vintage sewing machine and fabric scraps highlighted the creative arts.
I even found fashion art—in a John Deere/Hawaiian shirt worn by a John Deere tractor owner.
Art (prints and photos) graces a wall of the Waterford Community Center, once a one-room school, moved onto the Steam & Gas Engines showgrounds and opened to the public this year.
And then there are the culinary arts as perfected by an Amish family selling handheld fruit pastries and pies plus homemade ice cream crafted on-site as attendees watched. They are new-to-the-show vendors. The peach pastry and ice cream, oh, my, so delicious. They sold out of pies and handhelds.
This may be a show themed to farming of yesteryear. But, as I discovered, art also abounds. Sometimes you just have to look through an artistic lens to see it.
© Copyright 2025 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
As school starts for most in Minnesota September 2, 2025
Tags: Annunciation Catholic Church & School, commentary, crime, education, first day of school, gun violence, Minneapolis, Minnesota, news, opinion, school, school shooting, violence
HOW WELL I REMEMBER the first day of classes at the start of a new school year. Decades ago as a student. Then as a parent of three. And now as a grandparent.
As a student, I felt excited. Nervous. Happy. I remember the sharp tips of new Crayola crayons. The discomfort of new shoes. Piles of multi-colored notebooks awaiting words.
As a mom, I remember worrying if my kids would catch the right bus, make friends, like their teachers.
But none of that matches the concerns I feel today as the grandmother of a first grader and a fourth grader who begin classes Tuesday morning in a community in the south metro. The deadly shooting of two students and injury of 21 others (including three octogenarian worshipers) during a morning back-to-school Mass last week at Annunciation Catholic Church in south Minneapolis weighs heavy on all of us.
Children, teachers and staff should feel and be safe in school. Parents should never have to wonder if their children will come home. Grandparents shouldn’t have to worry how their children, their grandchildren, are going to navigate all of this.
But school violence is all too real. And it shouldn’t be. I invite you to read a blog post by Kathleen Cassen Mickelson (click here), a mother, grandmother, writer, photographer, poet and activist. She writes with passion and clarity about the Annunciation shooting and gun violence, including steps we can take to change things. Kathleen’s words are powerful and move us to a place of action with the strong word, “Demand.”
As someone who grew up in Minneapolis, Kathleen writes from the heart. She is grieving. Angry. Frustrated. Just like me. Just like so many of us in Minnesota and beyond.
To the politicians out there who put guns before kids and who vote against funding for mental health programs, pause for a moment and assess your priorities. Walk in the shoes of kids, parents, grandparents, teachers. And then think of Fletcher Merkel, 8, and Harper Moyski, 10, shot to death in a Minneapolis church during the first week of classes at Annunciation Catholic School.
© Copyright 2025 Audrey Kletscher Helbling