Thanks for taking the time to read Cutters Features Fab Art—a monthly article which highlights some of our favorite local art pieces created by metal fabricators in the Phoenix Metro area and greater Arizona. To suggest a feature, please feel free to get in touch with us through the contact form on our website at www.cuttersfab.com/contact.
If you’ve driven along Indian Bend Road in the last decade, there’s no way you could miss them—five silver horses which appear to be galloping toward the roadside. In the sun, these 14-foot “equine gargoyles” gleam, but it’s when the rain comes down in Phoenix that the behemoth sculptures truly shine.
This art installation, known as Water Mark, was designed by Laura Haddad and Tom Drugan to be a striking landmark which complemented the area’s usage as a flood basin. Spaced 125 feet apart, the interior structure of the faceted aluminum horses allows for water to pass through the back of each sculpture before exiting the mouth, creating a fountain effect. At night, they are softly illuminated with yellow light on one side and blue on the other, with the former symbolizing the sun and the latter symbolizing water.
Haddad and Drugan worked with a metal fabricator based in Massachusetts known as CWDC—the Charles Wiemeyer Design Company—to complete Water Mark over the course of four years. According to the nonprofit Scottsdale Public Art, the fabrication of all 5 horses required 250 sheets of sanded plate aluminum and more than 25 miles’ worth of welding stick to complete.
Water Mark is a lovely homage to the surrounding land’s former use as an historic Arabian horse ranch and today is a lovely addition to Arizona’s art scene. You can see how the metal sculpture functions during a Phoenix rainstorm by checking out this video.
