South Okanagan sculptor creates giant wine bottle from horseshoes

You could call him a horseshoe artisan.

Jean Ouellon of Kaleden recently completed his latest project – a sculpture of a wine bottle, made entirely of used horseshoes.

Ouellon is becoming well-known for his horseshoe creations. He completed a five-month long project to create a horseshoe sculpture of a salmon last June as part of a pandemic project.

Prior to that he has created horseshoe sculptures of bears and birds, now on display in front of the David Kampe Tower at Penticton Regional Hospital.

He’s hoping there will be a spot for his latest creation in the middle of the Ellis Street roundabout in Penticton. He figures there are few better places for a wine bottle sculpture than on the main road to the Naramata Bench. 

“Dec. 6 is the deadline for applications to have it placed in the roundabout. That would be a good place for it, but I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Ouellon says.

He plans to put an application into the City of Penticton to have the wine bottle sculpture placed in the roundabout.

The wine bottle took six months to make and involved more than 1,000 recycled horseshoes.

Ouellon prides himself on his ability to repurpose the materials he puts into his sculptures.

“It would be nice to do something with it,” he says of his latest creation.

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