The Corn Palace

Today, we explored Mitchell, SD a little. Mitchell is a town of about 15,000 people. Since it is located on Interstate 90, it has more amenities than a typical town of that size. For example, it has a K-Mart, Wal-mart, and Shopko. Those three stores would be a lot for 15,000 people to support.

The most exotic thing in Mitchell (and the reason we chose to stop here) is the Corn Palace. The entire exterior of the Corn Palace is redecorated with corn and grains every year. This week happens to be when they are tearing the old murals off and preparing for new murals. So, we got to see workers removing corn from the old murals as well as some of the base drawings for the new murals. The first photo shows some new parts that are finished for 2009--the mosaic with the date and the star and background, which are made of grains. The second photo shows one of the outside murals that has been partially removed. Shortly after we took this photo, workers climbed upon the scaffolding under mural and continued removing the mural, ear by ear.

An artist makes all the base drawings and keys each part to a corn color, similar to creating a paint-by-number drawing. Once the artist finishes all the base drawings, a variety of workers actually apply the corn and grain. They use 11 different colors of corn and prepare each ear of corn by splitting it lengthwise down the middle to create a flat side. The flat side is laid against the building and the corn is nailed in place. The result is a mosaic effect with corn ears instead of stones.

Although the murals outside of the building were not there for us to see, we did get to see several marvelous murals inside in a decorated basketball arena. One of the employees told us that the inside murals are only changed about every five or six years. Also, he told us that the expenses of the Corn Palace are paid through revenue taken in by renting the basketball arena. The last three photos show the basketball arena. The last of these three photos shows a close-up of the mural that is behind Roger's head in the photo right before it.