The motor hums, the paint squirts and scatters: art.
The Spin-a-Painting booth has been a State Fair fixture forever, helping would-be junior Jackson Pollocks make something that's theirs and theirs alone. The booth sits in the shadow of the DNR fire tower, and perhaps you noticed it looks different this year.
It is. Brand new. But still humble, low-tech, spattered with the hues of a hundred creations. New owner?
No. David Perlman, 60, is still the proprietor. It's been in his family for 52 years. "I'm the one and only owner."
So you started the business when you were … 8?
"It was a little stand across from Danielson's Onion Rings by the food building, run by a woman named Dory Sloat. My dad had been racking his brains to find something unique to do at the fair, and when he read to me a Cedric Adams column that said Dory wouldn't be coming back the next year, I said 'Can we buy it?' "
They could and they did.
"The booth we bought from her had the spin units built into wooden barrels, and she was running seven of them. We adopted her design at first, but then we built our own, plywood with canvas sides. We took that to the Clay County Fair in Spencer, Iowa. A windstorm came up and it sailed away." Back to the drawing board; the result was the booth that held down its spot for decades.
