If you've made your way around downtown Gainesville you've probably run in to a rather large, steel horse... or three. Maybe you were at the hospital, maybe you took pictures with Miss Scarlet while you visited the Quinlan, maybe your dorm room looked out on the Horse and Ponies at Brenau.
No matter which horse you made friends with, you've become acquainted with the unique metalwork by Eric Strauss of Ellijay.
His career didn't begin with metal horses. Strauss was in business school at Georgia Southern University and was taking a photography class as a core course when he got a peek at the sculpting studio.
"The sculpture department was across from the photography department, but they kept the doors shut because of the dust and noise and various reasons. And after about six months, one day... curiosity got the cat and I opened the door and I saw this wonderful mess in there and I just thought, 'This looks so fascinating,'" Strauss said. "The start of the next semester I took a beginning sculpture class and by that summer I had dropped out of business school and pretty much joined the art department full time."
Strauss opened in his shop in the late 1980s. The metal horses we know in Gainesville came about in 1992 and their popularity grew quickly.
"I built four monumental sized horses, then Elton John bought my first horse in 1993. And I just got involved in the series... I guess I sold the series out in 2014," Strauss said.
Strauss said he was inspired when he met Deborah Butterfield and one of her large, rustic metal horses at a gallery in Marrietta.
"I was just amazed by it. I was kind of burned out on my other series and I had just purchased all the metal - I had apprenticed with Carolyn Montague, another well known sculpture - I just bought all her stainless steel. All this curved and kind of corkscrewed pieces of metal," he said.
"So I decided I wanted to do a horse myself but I wanted to do it in a different style, cause Deborah Butterfield's were real rustic, a lot of junk metal. So I made mine out of stainless steel and did more like ghost images and frozen lines, a lot of curves, they were all organic."
The horses aren't just in Gainesville. One of his larger works, Lightening, is featured in the permanent collection of the Booth Museum in Cartersville and another 16 foot horse stands tall at Missionary Ridge in Chattanooga.
He has other projects outside of large, stainless steel horses. Strauss began working on architectural pieces in 2008, when he was coming off a show at the Booth Museum in Cartersville. The economy started crashing in 2009 and he said the first thing to go in people's budgets were outdoor artwork.
"I had already used forged elements in my work, but I wasn't necessarily an architectural blacksmith," he said. "I had somebody ask me to make a fire place screen. I had limited tools and it was real detailed. And after years of working in stainless steel I felt like I needed a break from it... I really enjoyed working with forged steel, cause you work with it hot and it's a totally different environment. I think it brought me back to my beginnings... working with kilns and furnaces I totally related to working with the forge."
Strauss said as the forged steel work projects grew, he studied with Savannah blacksmith Johnny Smith to perfect his craft. He said with his background as an assemblage sculptor, he has a different view than most blacksmiths.
"Instead of pre-planning and making pieces to fit a design, I come up with a loose concept and then I make all the parts and pieces and I use the parts and pieces to direct me of how I'm building a piece."
The public can enjoy some of his architectural works in Gibbs Gardens in Ball Ground. Strauss says his current goal to join the two series - his art work and his architecture work - into one series.
Strauss has a studio in Ellijay and can be found online and on social media.
