Buy Photo Jacqui Janetzko/Correspondent
By Marian Rizzo
Correspondent
Published: Thursday, February 16, 2012 at 5:06 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, February 16, 2012 at 6:00 p.m.
Horse Fever II will pick up speed this weekend as the public arts project rounds the bend in its final weeks.
Facts
Horse Fever II Events
Saturday: Tour de Horse road rally, “From Celebration to Inspiration.”
The tour starts with the horse Celebration, 10 a.m.-noon at Brick City Center for the Arts, 23 SW Broadway. Refreshments. Pick up maps at Brick City or online at ocala.com/horsefever. Free admission, $5 donation accepted for horse cards at Brick City.
Event ends with free Inspiration party, 3 p.m., at Artful Gifts Gallery in On Top of the World’s Circle Square Commons off State Road 200. Food and prizes at 5 p.m.
Saturday, March 10: Farewell to the Herd, free reception runs 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Hilton Ocala. Horses will be on display until March 18. Artists will be present. People’s Choice horse and three horses created by local schools will be unveiled at 2 p.m. Raffle tickets, $10, will go into a drawing for the People’s Choice horse. Drawing will be held in May (to be announced).
March 18 and 19: All horses will be removed from their spots around town and moved to Live Oak Plantation.
Friday, March 23: Horse Fever II auction, 6:30 p.m. Proceeds benefit Marion Cultural Alliance and assorted other charities. Live Oak Plantation, 2215 SW 110th Street, six miles west of I-75 off State Road 40 in Ocala. Tickets are $75 and must be purchased in advance: mcaocala.com or 369-1500.
For information, visit mcaocala.com or call 369-1500.
Celebrations will kick off Saturday with Tour de Horse, a find-the-horse road rally starting at Brick City Center for the Arts. Maps will be available at Brick City and at ocala.com/horsefever. The horse statues also have gone high-tech: QR codes are imprinted on their name plates, allowing smartphone users to scan the codes for a digital map image.
Ocala radio station WMFQ-FM 92.9 will continue the festivities with a week-long call-in contest offering $2,000 in prizes. Participants are asked to keep a list of horses and their numbers.
Soon, the Horse Fever II statues will be rounded up and removed from their posts throughout the county.
On March 10, folks will get to say “Farewell to the Herd” during a celebration at Hilton Ocala, and the final auction will take place on March 23 at Live Oak Plantation, hopefully bringing in big bucks for Marion Cultural Alliance and numerous local charities.
“We already had calls from Kentucky so far asking for catalogues,” said Laurie Zink, MCA board member and Horse Fever co-chair.
“A lot of our buyers are here that week because of Live Oak (International Driving Event) and the OBS sales, so they come for other events and leave with one of our horses,” she said.
The hoopla centers around the nearly 30 life-size horse statues created by local artists last year and placed on public display throughout Marion County. Dubbed Horse Fever II, the project marked the 10th anniversary of the original Horse Fever, which raised more than $800,000 for charities in Ocala.
The new herd was introduced with great fanfare in September.
“We’ve had a lot of business owners tell us they have people in front of their businesses every day taking pictures and looking at the horses,” Zink said. “I think it’s also brought attention to the older horses again.”
Horse Fever II also tapped the creativity of area students. MCA dispatched three horses to local schools; students at Madison Street Academy, West Port High School and Hillcrest Public School for Exceptional Students then decorated the statues. Those horses will be unveiled during the Farewell to the Herd party and then sold at the auction.
Jaycee Oliver, principal at Madison Street, said Feb. 29 has been designated as Horse Fever Day, so all 464 students can participate in painting Seahorse — the Next Generation.
“We’ll have a special schedule. Every 20 to 30 minutes we’ll be running an entire classroom through the art room so they can participate,” Oliver said.
Hillcrest students are nearing completion on their horse, Reaching for the Stars, which ties in with the school’s 40th anniversary theme, “40 Years of Reaching for the Stars.” Principal Lori Manresa said every one of the school’s 165 students will have a chance to participate.
“The concept of using handprints was something the kids could do despite their disabilities,” Manresa said. “We started at the bottom of the horse and worked our way up as though reaching for the stars.”
Manresa said they hope the buyer will decide to place the horse at Hillcrest after the auction.
West Port art students based their horse, Artquestrian, on the numerous visual and musical arts taught at the school. They’re being guided by art teacher Gene Hotaling, the same artist who created Quarterhorse on Ocala’s downtown square.
Quarterhorse, incidentally, was damaged last year when vandals pried off the statue’s real quarters. Hotaling then repaired the damage with toy coins, but Hotaling is working on a plan to affix real, vandal-proof quarters on his work of art before the auction.
Meanwhile, Hotaling said the West Port’s horse has taken on a life of its own.
“It’s a hands-on project, probably 25 to 50 students working on it,” Hotaling said. “They’ve all gotten on board and taken on different pieces of it and are painting it themselves. We’re using exclusively acrylic paint and some gel mediums to increase their thickness. After that debacle with the quarters, we’re not gluing anything on.”
When the final auction arrives, buyers get to decide where to place their horses and what charity will get half the proceeds. The other half goes to MCA’s continuing arts projects in the community.
All proceeds from the student-created horses will go toward art supplies for all of Marion County schools. A portion of the funds also will purchase communication equipment for non-verbal students at Hillcrest, Zink said.
