CowParade North Carolina 2012 Is Here!

Grace’s Cow

This past Saturday I headed over to Durham to catch the kickoff of CowParade North Carolina at Golden Belt in Durham. CowParade North Carolina 2012 features more than 150 painted cows, created by NC artists from life sized fiberglass cows. On Saturday the decorated cows were all lined up outside in the Goldenbelt parking lot for the public to see them for the very first time. There were loads of people all ages there examining the creative designs, talking to the artists, and of course getting there pictures taken with the cows.

Cow-Dinal

While all of the cows offer their own unique artistic twist, a few of them really stood out as my favorites. I really enjoyed the bird-like cow pictured above named “Cow-Dinal” and the cow pictured below on crutches humorously named “Owie Cowie”.  Others like “Bearden Bovine” and “La Catrin” (pictured further down on this page) also stood out to me for their unique designs and use of color.

Owie Cowie

The life-sized cows are around 8’ long and 5’ high and weigh approximately 125 pounds. Following the kickoff at Golden Belt, the cows were distributed throughout the Triangle and placed public places along streets, in parks, and around storfonts and other public places in Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill where they will remain to be enjoyed through the first week in December.

Bearden Bovine

A few of the places you will find these artisitc cows include, The American Tobacco Campus, Golden Belt Campus, UNC Campus, Downtown Raleigh, North Hills Cows. There are also a few individual cows in unique locations throughout the Triangle in “outlying pastures” so you never know where you might encounter one!

Bovine Line Up!

At the conclusion of the three-month public cow display, an auction house will administer a live auction of select bovines, while others will be sold via online auction. Funds raised will benefit N.C. Children’s Hospital.

Dogwood Blossum

You can view more of my pictures from the CowParade Kickoff featuring more of the cows in my flickr photo album. When I was at Golden Belt taking these photos I ran into my friend and local blogger Triangle Localista. If you don’t already follow her blog I highly recommend you do. She also has a great post about the CowParade “Roundup: with links to additional photos on her blog here

Mootalic

Now that the cows have been “put out to pasture” I look forward to running across them in their new homes throughout the Triangle. I want to get a few additional pics of several that I missed at the kickoff event (due to the large crowds around them). I am particularly interested in finding the cow decorated like a “sock monkey”!

La Catrin

To find out more information about CowParade North Carolina 2012, and to download the official CowParade app, go to cowparadenc.com or follow them on their facebook page. To find out more about N.C. Children’s Hospital, go to ncchildrenshospital.org.