Grooms fascination with state fairs began when he was a teenager while visitng the Tennessee State Fair with his family. This commission for a work based on a building on the the Iowa State Fairgrounds enabled him to develop a work that displays his mastery of a distinctive form of art that is both approachable and penetrating in its view of American culture. As with all of Grooms' "sculpto-pictoramas", as he calls them, direct viewer interaction with the works is extremely important. Viewers can walk into and around the sculpture, encountering life-size figures.

Red Grooms was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1937. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, and the Hans Hoffman School of Fine Arts, Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Source: News, September October 1991.