Artist Hopes Dairy Herd Makes Poetry
Dec 2, 2:09 PM (ET)
By JIM FITZGERALD
PURCHASE, N.Y. (AP) - Any artist can paint cows. Nathan Banks paints ON cows.
Banks, a 22-year-old student at Purchase College, painted single words (from "a" to "existential") on the flanks of about 60 cows near his upstate New York home, then let them wander around to see if they could compose poetry.
So Holsteins and Jerseys named Elsie and Maggie came up with phrases like "eccentric art,""performance as cow environment" and Banks' own favorite, "organic conceptual art as poetry."
One animal seemed especially inspired - with "away" written on her side, she broke loose from the herd for a while.