James Mellick's Designs for "Horse Mania" Project
Lexington Arts and Cultural Council, Inc., Lexington, KY
Chicago had it's Cows and Lexington Kentucky will increase it's horse population during the Summer of 2000. The following designs by James Mellick are being submitted for the competition which will select regional artists to embellish and decorate nearly 75 life-sized fiberglas sculptures of horses which will be displayed throughout Lexington. The sculptures will be auctioned after the public exhibition and the proceeds will be divided equally between the LACC and a charity of the sponsor's choice.
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"Horse of a Different Color" |
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"Red Horse" |
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"Horse Feathers" |
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"Woody" |
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"Horse Feathers" 2001; acrylic on concrete. Painted for Delaware, Ohio youth arts fund raiser
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"Red Horse" 2001, acrylic on concrete. Painted for Delaware, Ohio youth arts fund raiser |
Post Script
No matter how old or established an artist is, he or she never really gets used to rejection. While the horse designs on this page made it through the first jury of art experts, none of the designs were picked up by a second jury of corporate sponsors from the Lexington area. I will leave it to the viewer to compare my designs to most of the designs executed for Horse Mania by visiting the Lexington Arts Council's web site at http://www.horsemania.org . My own feeling is that, compared to the Chicago Cows, maybe only eight horses were changed sculpturally, and it seems that most of the artists accepted were painters or graphic artists who simply transferred their style of painting on flat canvases to the 3D surface of the fiberglas horse. Most often, the effect was surrealism, Magritte-like, and the painting had little to do with the anatomy of the horse and often worked to camouflage or obscure the sculptural form.
I have worked between painting and sculpture throughout my career. An analytical and decorative approach to animal forms has comprised the major body of my work and my decorative style enhances rather than contradicts the form. It seems that I would have been a natural for this project. Oh well...you can lead a horse to water....
To see how my style is applied to the horse form, see Blue Collar Pegasus which was recently installed in Augusta, Georgia.
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