Carney Art

This is carney art, as in carnival, not the late Art Carney.

I wandered through the Trail Days carnival early this morning just as the sun was coming up. The whole lot was deserted. It was kind of eerie in a way, but once I really started looking at some of the art work applied to a couple of the trailers, it rapidly went downhill to out and out creepy.


OK, monkeys I can handle, even ones that look like they were spray painted by a talented graffiti artist. But monkeys and "shoes required" tipped the irony meter.


This is a detail from the first photo of the ticket trailer up on top. There's a lot going on in that one, including two policemen presumably falling to their deaths from a balloon. But if you look carefully, you find that the guy wearing the boater isn't looking up at the falling balloonists. He's looking down at this woman's big butt. What's more, her sly smile seems to indicate she knows where he's looking.


This is painted on the entry door to the ticket trailer. There's a good reason your parents said to never take candy from strangers, and it doesn't get much stranger than this. Look carefully and you'll notice that his right eye is actually a wide angle lens.



This is part of the same trailer. The guy is obviously impressed with this young woman's talents. Both of them.

Sure, there's more 'normal' carnival stuff, like riding this chicken on the merry go round. Lovely.

Here's the Ferris wheel in silhouette against the rising sun. It was early. And it was cold! Temperatures fell to the low 40s overnight.

The deserted midway at dawn.

I think the city contracted with the same carnival for the last couple of years. Many of them winter here in Oklahoma so perhaps this is a local carnie business too. I think there's an Oklahoma tag on the merry go round trailer.

This is the first time I've really noticed the art on the trailers. It's perhaps in the realm of folk art. I got a kick out of looking at the details, though, and it's a reminder to look for those little things that I'd normally miss.