Art To Be Enjoyed Until The Cows Come Home

By Shannon Hicks

BETHEL — Visitors to Madison Square Garden in New York City can expect to see any number of things at the world-famous venue. There are concerts held there, horse and dog shows, major conventions and sales events, sporting events, and even the occasional filming of game shows like Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! when they go on the road. But cows at Madison Square Garden?

Yes.

This year, visitors to the Garden and its surrounding area are encountering some cows. Hundreds of ‘em. They aren’t live cows, but the life-size sculptures have been catching people off guard nevertheless, as the popularity of an outdoor public art exhibition has jumped from Zurich, Switzerland, to land last summer in Chicago, Illinois, and now New York City. And among the 500+ cows that are displayed in the city-wide moo-seum this summer, two of the herd were created by an artisans’ group that calls Bethel’s former train station their home.

Cows on Parade was introduced in Zurich by a man named Beat Seeberger-Quin in 1998. The public art display debuted with 400 magnificently decorated fiberglass cows set up in and around the city’s retail centers.

The life-size sculptures were identical at the onset — a blank white canvas — but each became a unique work of art once in the hands of artists. In fact, one purpose of the event was to showcase the local arts community. The event was so popular people began creating their own cows for the “parade,” and by the end of the summer there were over 800 cows roaming the streets of Zurich.

While in Zurich on business that summer, a Chicago businessman saw the cow parade and brought the concept back to the United States. The businessman, Peter Hanig, who was also president of Greater North Michigan Avenue Retail Association, did not have a hard sell. The idea of a Cow Parade in the United States received great feedback and last summer Chicago played host to its own herd of cows.

More than half of the 350 displayed cows were earmarked for auction, to benefit Chicago area charities. The majority of the balance were taken home by their owners for private display, while a few have remained on public display. Three cows were even created later in the year and displayed for the holidays. Kwanzaa Cow, Christmas Cow: The Gift of the Mooji, and Hanukow were presented in the city’s Water Tower Park.

CowParade is now in the Big Apple, and the success of Chicago has, well, been nothing less than mooo-ving. Tourists from around the world are enjoying the unexpectedness of finding cows in every style, shape, and form in all five of the Big Apple’s boroughs.

Artists from across the country sent in over 3,000 entries for consideration earlier this year, with 500 artists or artist groups accepted for inclusion in CowParade™ 2000. Phyllis Berger, a member of Bethel Arts Junction who also serves as the organization’s secretary, learned of the New York event earlier this year from a friend who had a cow in the Chicago event last year.

“We thought it would be fun to do,” Ms Berger said of the group’s decision to enter designs for a few cows. “We have so much talent here. We sent in an application at the end of March and just let it go from there. We didn’t think we’d ever hear from the organizers.”

A few weeks later, BAJ’s membership found out it had been accepted to decorate not just one but two of the life-size cows for the citywide event. Drawings had been accepted for Tiffany Cow, a blue stained glass-looking cow that was designed by BAJ co-director Adele Moros, and Carousel Cow, a cow designed to look like a carousel horse, complete with a golden pole, saddle, and reins, that was the brainchild of BAJ member Bob Everding.

In all, it took members of Bethel Arts Junction about two weeks to completely decorate each cow.

Art groups had the option of choosing from one of three poses for their cows — standing, sitting, or grazing — and artists were allowed to adjust the poses using any creative method they wanted. Tiffany is a sitting cow, and Carousel is a standing cow.

This summer, New York is home to, among others, Taxicab Cow, Cowapatra, Broadway Cow (a cow covered with playbills), Radio City Moosicow, and a scattering of Cash Cows.

In Chicago, tourists and residents encountered Moooooonwalk, a grazing cow in a NASA astronaut suit complete with helmet; Bridge Cow, which was done by the staffs of Bureau of Bridges and Transit and Department of Transportation and had the animal wearing a hard hat, an orange warning vest, and boots a la a city worker; Double Moo, a blue and green two-headed cow; and The Now Cow, a brown cow with the word “How” on its side.

Also on view was Odalisque (Reclining Nude) Cow, Mike Baur’s humorous entry that turned a cow upside down and had it painted in the style of Delacroix; and Pi-COW-sso, a ballet-dancing cow that had been outfitted in a replica of the horse costume created by Pablo Picasso for the 1917 Masini ballet Parade.

Cows on Parade is the first public art exhibition ever to encompass all five of the city’s boroughs. The animals have been placed on public and private locations, but all are publicly accessible. A few are in creative locations including on rooftops and in boats, buses, and trains.

Target Corporation sponsored seven cows this year, all created by the renowned architect and designer Michael Graves. These are the cows visitors are encountering at Madison Square Garden and Park. Six cows have been set up grazing in the park area, with two of them at the east-side entrance of the park at Fifth Avenue and the other four milling about Worth Square. The seventh cow is in the breezeway at Madison Square Garden, looking as if it has strayed from its bovine brothers and sisters.

Cows on Parade is catching on like wildfire. In addition to the New York event, Stamford, Conn., and West Orange, N.J., are presenting similar events on a smaller scale this summer. Stamford’s Cows on Parade offers 67 cows in the downtown and Stamford Town Center area, on view until October 1; the West Orange exhibition has 28 cows on view until September 4.

The exhibition has also taken on a life of its own, with cities across the country coming up with enough strains of the original idea to fill a farmyard. There is the Belfast Bearfest, a festival of 40 artist-decorated life-size bears in Belfast, Me., along with exhibitions presenting pigs in Cincinnati and Peoria, Ill., lizards in Orlando, Fla., mermaids in Norfolk, Va., and even six-foot-tall ears of corn in Bloomington, Ind.

More than $3 million was raised for charity through last year’s Chicago auction. Sotheby’s conducted a live auction of 65 of the cows, while another 75 were sold online through Metromix.com. HANDsome, a white cow with colorful handprints created by the artist Stephanie Thornton and patients of Children’s Memorial Foundation, was the top lot of the auction. The cow raised an incredible $110,000, which went right back to Children’s Memorial.

The average price for the cows sold was $25,000. That’s a lot of cow chips. New Yorkers are, of course, hoping to top the $3 million mark when an auction for the New York cows is held after Labor Day. Members of Bethel Arts Junction are hoping Tiffany and Carousel will both milk the auction crowd for a few thousand dollars at least, because the auction this year will once again benefit children’s, educational and other charities.