After a long hiatus, we are back on the American Road with the folks who are part and parcel of the stories in our magazine. In this first edition, we meet Erika Nelson, one of the authors who has given us a unique view of the American Road’s roadside attractions for over a decade.
Erika is kind of a travelling evangelist for folk art both collecting it and encouraging its creation. She has chronicled bigger than life attractions along our nation’s byways: Everything from the biggest duck on Long Island to the largest baseball bat in Louisville, Ky and an enormous catsup bottle that serves as the water tower in Collinsville, IL Erika has collected these and miniaturized them into…the World’s Largest Collection of the World’s Smallest Versions of the World’s Largest Things.
I caught up with Erika recently at her home base in Lucas, KS where she is now planning on establishing a world HQ for her collection. A local businessman donated an historic building as a base for her miniatures and she is going to spend 2017 setting up her base of operations in the Sunflower State. You’re going to love Erika’s definition of the kind of art she scours America’s backroads to find. To see more images from the story in this podcast visit the Erika Nelson photo gallery.
