Lost Art - Fred Smith Sculptures Page 2

Budweiser Clydesdale Team of eight horses as seen from Highway 13 heading north.

Budweiser Clydesdale Team of eight horses as seen from Highway 13 heading north.
This tableaux features two additional horses who directly face the highway.

We drove northward on Highway 13. Just outside Phillips, Wisconsin, a team of life-size concrete Budweiser Clydesdales facing south along the side of the highway with real leather tack pulling a real wagon with barrels of beer came into view. The sight was astounding! This sturdy horse team in life was featured by the Budweiser Brewing Company in countless state fairs across America. In Budweiser beer commercials since the 1950's, these horses galloped in unison across every TV screen in America.

Detail of the Clydesdale team.

Detail of the Clydesdale team,
Smith's last work which took six months to complete.

The horses were portrayed with great attention to authenticity and detail. The gray concrete of each horse's body was studded with round amber brown beer bottle bottoms in an attempt to replicate the brown coat of a Clydesdale. The white forelegs were created by white china shards. Real horseshoes clad each hoof. This tableau was the last work Fred Smith completed before a stroke brought his work to a halt. It seemed fitting that this ambitious final work should be a visitor's introduction to Smith's world

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