Gill Holland, co-owner of The Green Building at 732 E. Market St. in Louisville’s NuLu District, wants to establish Louisville as the “Gateway to Bourbon Country.” And now a new bike rack sculpture in front of the building is pointing the way.
The bourbon-themed sculpture, designed by artist Jacob Heustis and dubbed “As the Old Crow Flies,” shows the actual direction and distance of each of the six distilleries on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail: Four Roses, Heaven Hill, Jim Beam, Marker’s Mark, Wild Turkey and Woodford Reserve.
Holland, whose wife, Augusta Brown Holland, is the daughter of a former Brown-Forman CEO, said he was inspired by way-finding signs he saw on a trip to Nantucket: ”You know, the ones that say, ‘Oslo: 7,000 miles that way; Los Angeles, 8,000 miles that way.’ I had this very kind of rustic street sign in mind, like you might find in the country. I gave that idea to Jacob and he turned it into this amazing art. And since we are the ‘Green’ Building, I thought it should be a bike rack.”
Heustis built the piece from wood and steel from barrels sourced from the distilleries and burned the names onto each sign. The sculpture was dedicated on Jan. 6 during the First Friday Trolley Hop with several master distillers in attendance.
“People love it!” Holland said. “We came up with this idea that it’s good luck to splash bourbon on it, and we hope that will become a new tradition.”
(Photo: Jacob Heustis)
