A Stamford Artist Makes 'Cows' a Roadside Attraction on Route 100 

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• A friend of the artist's astride a "cow"

Black-and-white Holsteins may be Vermont's most iconic cows, but Richard Silc prefers his cattle with a little splash of color.

Since 2018, the metal artist in Stamford has been creating a herd of colorful cow sculptures at the entrance to his property on Route 100 in southern Vermont. Drivers delight in the bold bovines, which Silc fashions from scrap metal. He's made six but aims for a herd of 10 by summer's end.

Silc makes other art, but "people really love the cows," he said.

A retired accountant for the U.S. Foreign Service, Silc said he took up welding "as a meditation" when he tired of spreadsheets. He moved to his Stamford home in 2013 and discovered a stockpile of oil tanks discarded by the dairy farmers who once worked the land. The 275-gallon vessels, with their heft and cylindrical shape, are ideal for making convincing heifers.

Silc upcycles other scrap metal — including library shelves and, in one case, the front bumper of a BMW — into cow heads and tails. Drawing on cubism, which prizes the use of geometric shapes, Silc cuts out triangles and stars to represent eyes and noses.

Some of the sculptures pay tribute to historic figures. "Picowso," Silc's first design, is inspired by the godfather of the cubist movement, Pablo Picasso. "Commie Cow," wearing a black beret with a red star, mimics Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. His next project will honor Lady Godiva, the Anglo-Saxon noblewoman who, legend has it, rode nude on horseback through town to get her husband to lower the townspeople's taxes. Silc's version, of course, will be "Lady Cowdiva" on a cow's back.

The artist enjoys seeing reactions from drivers. People often ask to buy the cows, but Silc said they're just for fun.

"I think we need more of that in Vermont — people putting stuff out there," he said. "Just to make it funky."