Horse Drawn Earth – Erie, PA
Erie, Pennsylvania has a giant junk-metal horse dragging the entire planet behind it, and you can see it for free any hour of the day. That’s the pitch. Whether it’s worth stopping depends entirely on whether you’re already driving down Holland Street.
The piece is officially called Fruits of Labor: Horse-Drawn Earth, a community art project completed in August 2016 by artists Ron Bayuzick and Kathe Umlauf. The horse is built entirely from scrap: wheel rims, grates, gears, chains, and whatever else could be welded into the shape of a draft animal. It stands in a grassy lot at Holland and East 13th, on the site of a former bedspring and rat trap factory. If that’s not the most Rust Belt sentence you read today, I want to know what beat it.
The globe behind the horse is an open steel frame with sheet-metal continents, and the ring at its base spells out the theme in cut steel: agriculture to industry, metals, water, natural resources. It’s a tribute to Erie‘s shift from farm country to iron and steel town, with the horse doing the pulling in both eras.
It’s a quick look. Park, walk around it, read the ring, take your pictures, and you’re back in the car inside ten minutes. If you’re in the neighborhood it’s a fine little stop. I wouldn’t route a trip through Erie for it.
