A marriage of sideshow carnival and fine art, Step Right Up! Voting Booth consists of a traditional art show tent or pop-up stand, outfitted with shelves of customized, hand-painted carnival knock-down figures (punks), with participants asked to exercise their right to ‘vote’. 2020 will bring Step Right Up! Voting Booth to a range of towns and populations with a tour of sites, festivals, alternative installation spaces, and State Fairs across the U.S., focusing on states with past and present voting access issues.
Erika Nelson is an independent artist and educator, exploring contemporary art forms in the public realm. While living in a vehicle for two years, she explored the nooks and crannies of the United States seeking out the odd and unusual, gathering stories of people who build Outsider Art Environments, as well as Roadside Vernacular Architecture known as World’s Largest Things. She developed her own traveling roadside attraction and museum featuring The World’s Largest Collection of the World’s Smallest Versions of the World’s Largest Things, settling in Lucas Kansas in a house adjacent to S.P. Dinsmoor’s visionary folk art site The Garden of Eden. Her work manifests itself in a series of interesting, innovative, engaging public art projects that incorporate Art into the Everyman’s everyday experience.