The artistic excrement of a Kentucky Derby winner can be yours for a cool $200
Sipping a mint julep with a centerpiece of “Derby Turds” isn’t for everyone. But for those who get the appeal, there’s a Kentucky artist making it happen for $200 a pop.
Coleman Larkin is a writer and mixed-media collage artist from the Appalachian Mountains who encases objects in a clear epoxy resin. His latest foray is doing so with the feces from 1997 Kentucky Derby winner, Silver Charm.
The $200 sell via Kentucky for Kentucky:
Equal parts art and novelty, these gorgeous nuggets of digested Kentucky bluegrass and whatever else horses eat were daringly harvested by the artist himself, fresh from the haunches of legendary 1997 Kentucky Derby winner Silver Charm at Old Friends Farm in Georgetown, KY.
And it’s only the first in a Dixieland Preserves line of “bizarro Southern resin encapsulations,” according to the Lexington-based company.
How does one come up with this?
Larkin told the New York Post it started when he wanted to put feces from his cat on his desk. It didn’t work out as he’d hoped, but it sparked a larger idea. He moved on to a bigger project: trying it with horse feces. Larkin experimented, found the right formula and pitched it to the Kentucky for Kentucky website.
“If I could figure out a way to do a horse turd, I knew that’d fit into their style perfectly,” Larkin told the Post. “It took months to figure out how to do it, but I finally cracked the code.”
In a blog post on the site, Larkin explains it as a laborious process to make sure each is suspended in a mason jar “with all the care of a Southern mamaw putting up pickled corn for the winter.”
Which Kentucky Derby horses participate?
Larkin first reached out to Coolmore Farms in Kentucky to inquire about using feces from Justify and American Pharoah, per the Post. They were not “at all” on board, he said.
Justify is the only undefeated Triple Crown winner, sweeping the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes in 2018. He retired a month later. American Pharoah won the crown in 2015, becoming the first horse in 37 years to do so.
Instead Larkin went to a human friend at Old Friends Farm in Georgetown, Kentucky, where Silver Charm resides. The horse with racing in his blood won the 1997 Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes. He came up slightly short at the Belmont.
Silver Charm is one of the top race horses of the century and entered the United States Racing Hall of Fame in 2007. He was retired from breeding in late 2014 and joined the Old Friends Farm family, a non-profit thoroughbred retirement farm.
A portion of the proceeds from “Derby Turds” will go the farm, per the Kentucky for Kentucky website. And if you want to see the horse who provided your centerpiece, Silver Charm is allowed visitors.
More from Yahoo Sports:
