It seemed to start innocently enough when Louisville, KY became the host of fiberglass horses placed throughout the city. Each of these horses are life-like, life-sized, and in various poses. Some even have jockeys. All of them have been painted by various artists, so that they appear as much as a work of art as they are a reminder that Louisville is the home of the most famous 2 minutes in (US) racing: The Kentucky Derby.
I went on vacation recently to Hendersonville, NC, where Main Street (all 5 blocks or so of it) has large fiberglass pigs posed and painted. As far as I know, Hendersonville is not known for anything swine-like. In fact, as you go east from Hendersonville, you hit apple orchards. This prompted Mrs. Vlad/Igor to wonder if perhaps this phenomenon is more wide-spread than we thought. Is the virgin urban landscape being threatened by creeping bucolicism? Does anyone else have similar fiberglass animals in their fair city?
Knoxville, TN apparently had bears back in 2002 - I didn’t move here until August, and they were gone by then. Except for a few, like the bumblebee bear that’s on the outside of the UT library. I actually saw/noticed it for the first time last weekend - I think it had been taken down for a while.
Oklahoma City has the buffalo. And Gainnesville, Florida did Gators (I can’t find a link). I think Palm Beach did alligators too but they were more realistic gators and not the mascot-y ones Gainesville used.
The Little Law School That Almost Could (my employer) was the recipent of a Jerusalem Lion ;j . I don’t know its name, but I call it the Salsa Lion because it has vegetables painted on its hide, and chili peppers on its mane.
I liked the idea when it was originally done in Chicago, but now I find it cliched. Every city does it.
I think if DC is going to do it again next year we should at least make a little more original, maybe statues of Sens. Delay and Daschle all over town, or statues of tourists standing on the left side of our metro escalators and keeping us from getting to work on time that we can paint.
I guess you could say we have a fiberglass flock–swans. Every couple of street corners. Local artists have painted them in all sorts of interesting ways. One near a doctor’s office is painted black with white swan bones a la x-ray. The one out in front of the local Wachovia has their blue and green logo design.
I think Lexington did the fiberglass horse thing before Louisville, actually. I guess it was the summer before we moved, so it would have been three years ago. My favorites were the blue buffalo and the Gerber daisy horse with the sunglasses. Most of them were taken down, but afaik there’s still a couple out on Versailles Road by Gaines Farm and Keeneland.
As for the pigs, North Carolina is pork barbecue country, so pigs are the animal of choice for doing this sort of project around here.