Rhubarbara needed a little love.
The 8-year-old beloved mascot of the CHUM Rhubarb Festival was starting to show signs of age. A group of local artists volunteered to make repairs and alterations to the costume.
"We are so thankful for these volunteers and for all the people who share their range of talents to make Rhubarb Festival a success," said Mary Schmitz, CHUM's development director. "It's great to have Rhubarbara back and looking so bright and colorful. It's amazing what a stalk of rhubarb can do for a community."
When Rhubarbara debuted in 2008, she was hardly recognizable. Duluth artist Holly Jorde adapted a donated Green Man Festival costume made out of chicken wire, tarps and pool noodles into a rough first design.
ADVERTISEMENT
"At first it was really cumbersome. The chicken wire was weird and I even remember a couple of 2-by-4s inside there. Those were the first things to go," Jorde said.
The next year, Jorde took the pool noodle and tarp parts to create a sleeker design that could be carried around. But it disappointed volunteers who hoped to wear the costume.
The following year she created a new Rhubarbara costume. The only person she had to model it on was her husband, Dave, a tall, thin runner. This resulted in the costume being tall, thin and mostly worn by runners, volunteers from local cross country and track teams.
"I never thought they'd be using the costume eight years later. I just made something that would work for the time being. I'd never made a mascot before," Jorde said. "It's been fun to see her grow a little larger than life."
Jorde served on the CHUM Rhubarb Festival board for five years and maintained the costume throughout that time. But as the festival grew, so did her family. She gave up her seat after her second child was born and stopped making adjustments to the costume at that time.
As the festival grew, CHUM started using the costume more and more year round. Rhubarbara can be found at a lot of CHUM events and even the Christmas City of the North Parade.
But with so much use, the costume started showing signs of age. The paint was peeling off the pool noodles, the leaves were in disarray, the earrings needed to be redone and there was the problem of Rhubarbara's skinny size.
Following a request for help, Sasha Howell of the College of St. Scholastica Theater Shop stepped in, altering the costume with new material and panels for greater flexibility to fit a range of body types. Howell also worked to remove chipped and fading paint from the costume's leaves.
ADVERTISEMENT
"I was in the middle of a show opening so I had her for about a day and a half. I miraculously found matching fabric at Hancock Fabrics and put in two panels to give the wearer more space," Howell said.
Howell also added Velcro to make the costume easier to fit into.
"It was a quick job, but I was glad to do it. The Rhubarb Fest is such a cool way for the community to support CHUM, so anything I can do, even if it's something small, is important and worth my time," Howell said.
Other friends of Rhubarbara, Ann Gumpper and Terese Tomanek, stepped in, sealing and repainting the swim noodles that give the costume texture, as well as repainting Rhubarbara's eyes and eyelashes and remaking the earrings.
"She just need a little sprucing up here and there," Gumpper said. "She's so fabulous-looking, we'd never mess with the design. She's the glamour vegetable of the festival."
Duluth East High School senior Carrie Fischer is ready to step into the veggie's shoes. She and her fellow members of the East Exec Board will volunteer in shifts in the costume.
"I've seen how excited people get to see her. She's just such a fun character," Fischer said.
If you go
ADVERTISEMENT
12th annual CHUM Rhubarb Festival
9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday, June 25
11th Avenue East and London Road
Admission is free.
Games, crafts, music, food, auctions, stage shows and more. Look here for more information.
