Worthington teen earns 5 grand champions at Nobles County Fair (2024)

WORTHINGTON — When Bryly McCuen walked into Benton Hall on the Nobles County Fairgrounds Wednesday morning in Worthington, the first thing that caught her eye was the grand champion 4-H ribbon hanging from one of her entries in the crafts division.

The project, a double-triangle shaped piece of metal art depicting a nature scene that she’d filled in with colored resin, has the appearance of stained glass. It garnered the top spot in the project area, which included seven other crafts projects McCuen created since last year’s county fair.

The soon-to-be Worthington High School senior created the design and made the project at home using tools in her dad’s welding shop — including a plasma cutter.

“I’ve done quite a few resin projects this year,” she shared, explaining how she first used UV resin, followed by epoxy resin which she added color to before letting it set for 24 hours. The result is an original design with coloring that gives the stained glass look.

While her dad, Bryan, and grandpa taught her how to use the plasma cutter, McCuen said she learned how to work with resin on her own.

“A few years ago I got a resin craft kit for my birthday,” she said. “I just kind of fell in love with it and experimented with different resin molds and shapes.”

McCuen is quick to admit she has a creative streak, something that may have come from her mom, Holly, who is also creative-minded.

“My parents have a big hand in helping me if I want something done a certain way — tweaking things or putting in different materials,” she said. “They’re a big help in all my creative decisions.”

After seeing the grand champion ribbon on her crafts project Wednesday morning, McCuen said she continued through Benton Hall, looking for the rest of her projects. What she found was not only exciting, but perhaps a bit overwhelming. She had four other grand champion ribbons draped from her projects in fine arts, photography, metals and woodworking.

By late morning, she still had no idea which project she’ll choose to exhibit at the Minnesota State Fair later this month. In the four years she’s taken projects to the state fair, two were in crafts and two were in metals.

For her metals project this year, the 17-year-old made a desk she intends to use for doing artwork. The removable legs and table base were made of metal in her dad’s shop, with angled metal bars and cuts of wood to create the abstract tabletop pattern.

“My neighbor has a woodworking shop, so I asked him if he could walk me through the steps of making the wood fit into the places (between the metal),” McCuen said. Because of divots in some of the wood, she attached a polycarbonate sheet to the tabletop to make the surface event. The legs were made to detach so it could be carried up the stairs in their home to her creative space.

Her second metals project, a life-sized deer with a planter box, garnered a purple ribbon.

In her first foray into woodworking, a grand champion ribbon hung from a repaired and repurposed tool chest turned art box. McCuen said the box belonged to her grandpa who worked as a car mechanic, and was taken from his repair shop in May.

“It was covered in grime and grease and I don’t know what,” she said. “The top was all busted up. I decided to take it and refinish it and put a new top on it and make it look pretty.”

While McCuen doesn’t know the age of the tool chest, she speculates it may have been made with leftover wood because it contains a mix of both hard and soft woods.

After she removed the old varnish, gave it a thorough cleaning, filled in holes with crafting clay, lined the drawers with contact paper and added new hardware, it turned into a beautiful statement piece. She intends to store her resin supplies such as glitter, metallic parts, add-in charms and smaller molds inside, as well as fill drawers with colored pencils, markers, highlighters — the basic art tools, she said.

McCuen’s grand champion in fine arts was awarded for a 3-D sculpture she made from plaster during an art class this spring at Minnesota West Community & Technical College’s Worthington campus. The sculpture features a mask, paint pallet and paint brushes.

“Our only instructions were that it had to be 3-D and it had to be plaster … and you had to have a plastered body part in it — that’s where the face came in,” she said.

Her final grand champion ribbon was received in photography manipulation, a category in which 4-H’ers can take an original photo and change it through manipulation in a program such as Photoshop.

McCuen, who takes pictures throughout the year, said she’d taken a lot of campfire photos in early June, and fireworks photos on July 4, but she had too many good options to decide. Her end result was combining a campfire photo with four fireworks photos to make it appear as though it was one image. The campfire, with the addition of fire magic, resulted in flames the colors of purple, red and green. She pulled those colors from the campfire and changed the images of the fireworks bursts to match them. The whole process took several hours to complete.

“I’m pretty handy with Photoshop,” she said, noting she’s taken Trojan Textiles and graphic design classes at Worthington High School. “There were some things I Googled that I wanted to do and didn’t know how to do. It all worked out in the end.”

McCuen’s creativity and passion for the arts are leading her toward a career in graphic design. She’s going to do post-secondary enrollment again as a senior through Minnesota West with the goal of both graduating from high school and earning her two-year Associate of Arts degree from the college next spring.

A two-year degree is really all that’s needed for graphic design, so McCuen said her goal is to start her own business doing metal cutouts, creating things with resin and designing for products that can be made on her T-shirt press, mug press and various key presses. Her dad has offered her space in his shop so she can create and build custom pieces.

Meanwhile, she still has two more years of eligibility as a 4-H member and is already planning and working on some of her projects for the 2025 Nobles County Fair.

“I have ideas for shop and I also have a few bigger projects that I’m currently working on for crafts and fine arts,” she said.

Before she gets too involved in next year’s projects, however, McCuen is going to soak up all there is to enjoy about the 2024 Nobles County Fair. McCuen had five rabbits to exhibit in Wednesday afternoon’s rabbit. And, there’s still that looming question about what she’ll take to the Minnesota State Fair.

“Which one is the most unique? What have they not seen before?” she questioned. “I want to take something that’s going to stick out and be different.”

McCuen started 4-H in the sixth grade, lured by the desire to exhibit projects. Her cousins were enrolled in the youth leadership organization and she asked if she could join.

“I started out small and each year I get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger,” she said of the nearly 30 projects she has on display at the fair.

McCuen is the oldest of three, with younger sisters, Dayna, 14, and Katyn, 11, also in 4-H. They are members of the Rushmore Central Hustlers 4-H Club. Look for their projects — and those of other Nobles County 4-H’ers — in Benton Hall on the Nobles County Fairgrounds in Worthington this week.