It was 2001 when we last checked in with Cowpainters LLC, a two-women-run business that had been born in the lingering mania over the embellished fiberglass bovine shapes that had grazed — and graced — the city two summers earlier.
Three years have passed, and Cowpainters is playing on a much larger pasture.
It’s still women-run, but artist Nancy Albrecht, 67, bought out her partner, artist Layne Jackson, then sold the operation to former banker Christine O’Brien, 57. Albrecht stayed on part time as art director, thus able to devote more attention to the fine art painting that was her precow vocation.
“These days,” Albrecht said, “we’re more in the production end of the business, doing projects for cities and non-profits. In 2001 we supplied two cities. The next year, it was six, then 13 last year. This year, we have 21 projects going. And none of them are cows.”
The company now offers more than 100 forms. “Pets, farm animals, lions and tigers and bears, oh my,” Albrecht said.
They have sent:
Sixty-eight merino sheep to Pittsfield, Mass., where a woolen industry boomed in the 1880s. The flock was billed as “Sheeptacular.”
Thirty-six bulldogs to Athens, Ga., for a fundraiser called “We Let the Dawgs Out.”
Twenty-five full-size moose (at 110 pounds, the heftiest animal Cowpainters supplies) to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, to benefit schools. The project was titled “No Moose Left Behind.”
Closer to home, they’ve sent bears to Racine, Wis., kiddie cars to Elmhurst and carousel horses to Ravinia. Naperville signed up for carousel horses in 2002, bears in 2003 and baby farm animals in 2004.
Most of the above end up auctioned off to raise money for charity. That was the reason O’Brien got interested in the business.
“I knew Nancy through a friend,” she said, “and I wanted to do something involving nonprofit organizations.”
Not that she wanted her business to be nonprofit, and it isn’t.
“We’ve pretty much doubled revenues each year and will be pretty close to $1 million this year,” she said. “And we do little marketing. Most of the business comes from word of mouth and our Internet site.”
The creatures great and small are designed at Cowpainters and rendered as small clay figures. These are taken to Orlandi Studios on the city’s West Side, where they are translated into full-size clay forms that become molds for the fiberglass critters.
The animals go not just to help worthy charities but sometimes to draw foot traffic and tourists to downtowns that have faded as businesses have moved to suburban malls.
Cowpainters has tried to get the city interested in an animal follow-up to the cows of 1999.
“It seems that people want cuddly things,” O’Brien said. “The furniture [in the 2001 Suite Home Chicago display] wasn’t cuddly.”
