By Margo Callaghan

Local artist Cathy McCarthy of Shelburne was feeling bummed back in January. She had just heard about the "The Cows Come Home to Burlington" art project to benefit the Vermont Campaign to End Childhood Hunger (VCECH), and it was too late for her to volunteer her own artistic interpretation to the project. Fortunately, she was proven wrong when a few days later, Tim Halvorson, owner of Halvorson's Café on Church St. in Burlington, called to ask her if she would execute a design for a five-foot high bovine if he sponsored her efforts. Halvorson's plan is to have McCarthy's cow grace the Church Street Marketplace in front of his café.

This is how the stark white, life-sized fiberglass cow ended up in McCarthy's Shelburne living room.

"The Cows Come Home to Burlington" is a community art project organized by the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce (LCRCC). Thirty-six of the fiberglass cows are currently being designed and painted by local artists for exhibition throughout the Burlington area beginning on May 10 and running through September. Later this fall, the cows will be put on the auction block, and a portion of the proceeds will benefit VCECH.

According to Community Art Project Manager Matt McMahon of the LCRCC, "the cow was decided as the ‘canvas' after a lot of thought. We wanted something iconic to Vermont, and while there were other ideas considered, we thought that cows would be the best fit."
McCarthy's choice of medium for the design was mosaic, and that entails McCarthy hand cutting each of the thousands of pieces of glass that will adorn the cow. McCarthy is more renowned for her work with paint, but mosaic has long been an interest. It started years ago when she and her husband, Kevin, lived in California.

"We were having a pool installed in our back yard, and I wanted to paint sharks at the bottom of it. The men who were doing the installation told me I should consider doing mosaic; if I painted the sharks, they would have to be repainted every two years!"
So McCarthy thrust herself into the new medium with gusto, and has been working in the art form ever since.

Painting a cow would have been so much easier, in terms of both the project's planning and creation. But the mosaic result is nothing short of amazing.

McCarthy started her masterpiece by sketching the intricate elements she wanted to incorporate into her cow-canvas. One side of the cow will depict the lake and mountain scene from a Burlington view. The Church Street Marketplace is also represented, as is the Vermont Yankee facility. Adorning the cow's forehead is the Tree of Life with a recycle logo at its crown.

As is the nature of thoughtfully designed mosaic work, the longer one looks at it, the more one sees. McCarthy has packed subtle nuances and humor into her art. Her bovine's ear is an ear...of corn. Wind turbines are incorporated into the design and the udder is a vibrant sun.

McCarthy estimates that she will have put in more than 200 hours into this project by the time the cow is completed for the April 25 timeline. Until then, with fingers that bear the inevitable scars from cutting and handling myriad glass fragments, she will be in the family living room amid a sea of mirrored and brightly hued pieces of her mosaic cow, composing a magical transformation.