“THE Horse”

During the month of March, we got offered to paint The NWA Florist’s horse.  This horse is famous in NWA, so we were honored to get to paint Miller’s logo on it:).  For those of you that aren’t familiar with “The Horse” (I think it has a name now, but I don’t know it), here is an article I came across when I googled it:

Why Fayetteville Rules: The Horse at Northwest Arkansas Florists

By Dustin Bartholomew, Flyer staff
Wednesday, May 28, 2008 · 4 comments

Let’s talk about another reason that Fayetteville rules; the painted horse outside Northwest Arkansas Florist on the corner of Joyce and College Street.
Not that I have to tell anyone where the painted horse is. That dude has been sitting on that corner for at least 29 years (according to this 2001 article.)
Or, roughly, anyway. The horse was relocated a couple of years ago when Northwest Arkansas Florist moved into a shared space with the new Starbucks, freaking several people out.)
So, just in case you’ve never driven down College Avenue, or you are a blind person without any friends that hates America and you’ve never seen this horse, here’s a quick description.
Outside this flower shop across the street from the mall, there is a metal horse that has been there for longer than I’ve even been alive. Once a month, it is painted by a different non-profit organization. It can only be painted by non-profit, or charitable organizations. (I know. I wanted to paint it myself once. I am not a non-profit or charitable organization.) As a result, it has been painted a different color every month for almost thirty years, and as a result of that it looks really weird and bumpy up close.

I’ve lived in Fayetteville for the better part of my life, and a couple weeks ago I stopped to get a closer look at that blob of around 300 coats of dried paint and (allegedly) metal. It’s been a jack-o-lantern for Halloween, a cowboy, batman, last week it was wearing an apron, this week it’s green, I can’t even remember all the different colors that it has been, but I do know that every time I went to the mall as a kid we had to drive by the horse so I could see what color the horse was, and what was written on the side of it.
What started as just something to cover up some vandalism nearly thirty years ago has now become a Fayetteville tradition.

*This article was written in 2008, and is about the original horse in Fayetteville.  Since then, they have added a 2nd location/horse in Bentonville, and that is the one that we painted. Here are some pictures of the masterpiece.  Thank you, Brittany Simone, for making this happen!