Horseplay Horses

Horseplay Horses Aiken Icons

By Nancy Johnson; Photography by Shelly Schmidt & Gary Knoll

A list of Aiken’s most iconic features would surely include the Hitchcock Woods, Hopeland Gardens, the canopy of live oaks on South Boundary, The Willcox, and, of course, the colorful assortment of painted horses scattered about town. But, unless you have lived in Aiken for some time, you may not know the story behind these life-size fiberglass horses, an incredible project called Horseplay.

“I love that there is still interest in Horseplay!” Anne Campbell says of the fundraising project, which spanned fall 2002 to spring 2004. Anne was the honorary chairperson of Horseplay and an enthusiastic promoter. “It was a great project and a very successful endeavor that certainly has brought the town of Aiken a lot of pleasure over all these years.”

Inspired by Saratoga Horses

Anne says the inspiration for Horseplay came from the painted fiberglass horse statues that adorn the city of Saratoga Springs, New York. Anne and her late husband Cot Campbell, who was the president of the horse racing syndicate Dogwood Stable, spent time in Saratoga every summer.

“When I first saw the horses out in the street I thought, oh my gosh, this is an idea whose time has come for Aiken. We have the parkways, of course, and so much traffic downtown,” she says. “There were lots of places to put them where pedestrian traffic would see and enjoy them.” She notes that other equestrian locales such as Lexington, Kentucky and Ocala, Florida have hosted similar projects where artists were engaged to paint fiberglass horses that are displayed around the town.

Anne’s first step was to enlist Bill Reynolds as the steering committee chairman. Although fairly new to Aiken at the time, Bill, a retired businessman and a board member of the Aiken Center for the Arts,

was already known for getting things done. “I was the mastermind and visionary, but Bill handled the logistics and did all the work,” says Anne. “First, we put together a committee, then talked to the mayor and got approval.”

Step by Step

“Anne told me about her idea for the project and how the concept was popular at the time; she thought it could be a successful fundraiser in Aiken,” Bill says. “We got the Aiken Center for the Arts (ACA) and United Way together in collaboration and told them we honestly did not know what it would be, but we were willing to give it a try.” It was agreed that Horseplay would be created to promote the arts in Aiken and that the proceeds would be used to set up a scholarship fund at ACA to subsidize art classes for seniors.

“We started out strictly as a trial balloon. We bought one of the fiberglass horses completely blank, brought it in and had some USC Aiken students paint it, creating our prototype,” Bill explains. They displayed the painted horse at the ACA and invited potential sponsors to see it and to hear about the concept. The idea was to recruit local businesses to sponsor the cost of a blank fiberglass horse, hire a local artist to paint it, and then sell all the horses at a gala auction.

“We didn’t know if we’d sell five of them or maybe ten, but it ended up that it was such a great concept, we got 30 sponsors at $3,000 a horse,” Bill says. Most of the sponsors were businesses, but a few individuals also stepped up to the plate. Bill says that this initial part of the project, all the research, creating the prototype, and securing sponsors, took about a year.

Artists Get On Board

The next step was procuring the horses and having them painted. Thirty blank fiberglass horses were ordered from a company in New Mexico.

Bill recalls that the horses were stored in a local warehouse while artists were enlisted to paint them.

“We learned by reviewing other similar programs that you have to give the artists some parameters. As the sponsors were paying $3,000, it was important that they knew what they were putting their name on,” Bill

explains. Bill and Anne put out a call for artists and received about 90 applications. “We had the artists include with their application a sketch of their design idea. We hung all the sketches up on the wall of the art center and let each sponsor choose which one they liked best.”

After the artists were selected, Anne and Bill went public with their plans for Horseplay. They explain that the name was intended to convey that it was a fun, lighthearted event. “The community immediately fell in love with it!” Bill says with a grin.

Prior to sending the horses out to be painted, research and preparation were once again key. “I talked to numerous paint companies and automobile painting shops,” recalls Bill. “There was a specific paint that the artists had to use, and then a protective finish.”

Finally, after the artists’ work was complete, all 30 horses were taken to a local auto body shop to have them covered in a durable clear coat spray to protect them from ultraviolet rays and rain.

Community Awaits Unveiling

The unveiling of the completed horses was a weekend-long extravaganza. It was kicked off on Friday evening in October 2003 with a black tie party at ACA.

“All the sponsors stood with their horses as celebrity announcers introduced each one. It was a gala event!” Bill Reynolds says.

The next day, volunteers draped each horse in a protective cloth, and moved them all to Newberry Plaza downtown for their public unveiling.

“We had an assortment of merchandise created for Horseplay,” Anne Campbell says. “There were calendars, t-shirts, mugs, etc.” A large crowd gathered in anticipation and then mayor Fred Cavanaugh went around and pulled the covering off each horse , one by one. All the sponsors were there and everyone loved having their photos taken with the various horses. “That was a great send-off as the horses then went out on display for about six months in and around the downtown area,” Bill notes. “It was highly publicized and we had a lot of people come from out of town specifically to see and photograph the horses.”

Anne agrees, “Horseplay being on display throughout town was

perfect. The community embraced the project and it was just so much fun for everyone in Aiken and beyond.”

Finally… the Big Event

After the extensive display period in town, Horseplay culminated in March of 2004 with a black tie auction and ball in a huge tent at the steeplechase ground, Ford Conger Field, which is now known as Bruce’s Field.

“We had the horses lined up in the tent and after cocktails and dinner, everyone bid on them,” Bill explains. Anne engaged two professional auctioneers from Fasig-Tipton, renowned for their high-end racehorse auctions. “They put on a real show and played the crowd like you couldn’t believe,” Bill recounts.

Tuxedo-clad volunteers from a USC Aiken fraternity brought each horse up individually and put it on a rotating pedestal with spotlights highlighting it, and then the bidding began.

“Horseplay raised almost a quarter of a million dollars that night and people were just blown away,” Bill says. “It got so ‘in the moment.’ One woman bought two horses, and then there were two consortiums that desperately wanted the same horse.”

One group wanted to keep the horse in Aiken and the other sought to take it to Atlanta. The horse, which was painted by Barbara Nelson, known to many as the current CEO and president of the SPCA Albrecht Center, was painted to depict her own OTTB, Hav Sum Fun, with the vibrant addition of the racing colors of various historical stables in Aiken. The Aiken group eventually outbid the folks from Atlanta, spending a staggering $23,000 for the horse. It is now on display at the Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame in Hopeland Gardens.

“I was very involved with the event,” says Barbara. “Anne and Bill did a fantastic job and it was really fun to be a part of it. It was a community effort to support the arts here in Aiken and the catalyst for kicking off the capital campaign for ACA. Having a center for the arts in a town like this is just fantastic; it goes along with the symphony, performing arts center, and animal shelter. We have some of the best things that exist for quality of life here in Aiken.”

Tough, But Not Indestructible

Another of the painted horses with a very interesting story is the one Georgianna Conger Wolcott worked on. Georgianna, known to all as “Girl” loved creating the image of Dogwood Stable’s 1990 Preakness winner, Summer Squall, for Cot Campbell. “Cot knew exactly what he wanted; so that part was easy,” she says. The horse was painted with Summer Squall’s color and markings, and on each of its flanks Girl depicted a scene from his life.

“One side showed him winning the Preakness and on the other was an iconic Aiken scene of exercise riders riding down Mead Avenue,” she says. Several years after the fiberglass horse was erected in the Alley, a tree at the restaurant next to the Bowery fell on it and crushed it. “I was just devastated,” she says.

But this wasn’t the painted horse’s first mishap. When the horses were being transported to the steeplechase grounds in an open trailer for the auction, Girl’s creation was at the back of the trailer. Somehow, it fell off, breaking a leg in the process. Girl, with help of an auto body shop repaired the leg after the auction.

Anne Campbell and Bill Reynolds today, 16 years after the auction.

“Fortunately, we were able to prop him up for the presentation and no one could tell,” she says with a laugh. Even though the horse she created is no more, she still has fond memories of the experience.

“The whole event, spanning years, was like nothing else we had ever seen in Aiken. It was an amazing undertaking by Bill and Anne,” Girl says. “People still talk about that gala.”

“I had only moved to Aiken a few years before taking this on,” says Bill. “I had no idea what I was getting into. Anne and I hit it off and once we started talking to potential sponsors and saw how excited they were, I thought we had a home run; I just didn’t know how big it was. Momentum just built with each new phase, culminating with the auction. It was my first introduction to Aiken and the receptivity by not only the sponsors, but also the city government and the community was amazing. It was the perfect event for Aiken at the time: everything was amazing. It was the perfect event for Aiken at the time: everything clicked.”