Bob Collins
I know what you’re thinking: “Bob, whatever happened to that sculptor’s effort to move a 40-ton horse in South Dakota?”
Reader Pegeen Donlin provided the answer today in letting us know that Wayne Porter’s gigantic horse, made out of old railroad tie plates, has successfully (and expensively, we figure) been moved from his blacksmith shop to his sculpture field along I-90 in Montrose, S.D. That’s a 130-mile trip.
It’s a really big horse and we’re partial to this moment in this video at which the horse’s huge tail is removed from its even larger rump.
Dakota Life Moment: Porting the Porter Horse
If you drive east along I-90, you will now see a new addition to the Porter Sculpture Park, a giant steel horse rising above the prairie. Porting the 50,000 pound Porter Horse from the artist's studio in St. Lawrence, South Dakota to the park near Montrose proved to be all in a day's work for these crane operators.
Posted by SDPB Living on Friday, November 16, 2018
It wasn’t going to be a horse when Porter started his project. It was supposed to be be a goat playing a saxophone. But the engineering required was too complex.
Moving the thing in the dark of night on Wednesday and putting it back together on Thursday wasn’t any piece of cake. “The mane kept flying off,” Porter said. But he’s not going to bother trying to fix it.
“I don’t want to go up there again,” he said.
It’s all done!
Posted by Porter Sculpture Park on Thursday, November 15, 2018
A Kickstarter campaigned raised over $18,000 for the move.
Though he had reportedly earlier told his family this would be the end of the big projects, he thinks the horse should have a buddy. So he’s thinking of building another horse.
That’ll have to wait. He’s working on a 20-foot white bunny.
