The Mane Attraction: Name Our Horse Project

In early 2002, Outer Banks Press launched The Winged Horse Extravaganza, a public art installation celebrating the 2003 Centennial of Flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Sponsors (either businesses or individual families) purchased a life-sized fiberglass horse, commissioned an artist to decorate it and publicly displayed it for everyone to enjoy. From May 2002 through October 2004, 99 horses with aluminum aircraft wings were decorated and displayed throughout the Outer Banks, garnering a substantial amount of attention from vacationing visitors.

Many of the horses were slated to be auctioned off in December 2003, but owing to an overwhelming number of requests from tourists and sponsors (plus a late summer hurricane), the 2003 horse auction was postponed, and the Winged Horse Extravaganza was extended through fall of 2004. Even though the project officially ended 11 years ago, many horses are still displayed on the island, and we regularly receive inquiries about them. The Winged Horse Extravaganza benefited a wide range of not-for-profit organizations, and through this new program, we offer support to the Dare County Arts Council and the Corolla Wild Horse Fund.

We are pleased to announce that we are relaunching the project this spring, again using fiberglass horses, although without wings. Owners of horses displayed from the previous project will receive recognition as Legacy Sponsors and will appear on our maps if they so desire. The project will not have an end date and we will kick off the new installation the last week of May. Headquarters for the event will be Glenn Eure’s Ghost Fleet Gallery, a venerable art gallery on East Driftwood Street in Nags Head.

This exhibit will celebrate our barrier islands’ historic significance and natural beauty, and will lean toward preserving and protecting our green spaces, the ocean and sound, and our wildlife and birds. We will also reintroduce our regional magazine, The Edge Outer Banks, as a publication supporting the project. One notable difference is that we have no plans to sell advertising in The Edge, which will metamorphose into an arts publication.