• See also "Cows on Vacation" -- last year's barnyard bash!

About the "Big Pig Gig"
(Library Report of 2001)

Thirty-one porcine statues from last year's Cincinnati's "Big Pig Gig" collection of over 400 fiberglass art figures have arrived on summer vacation in Beaufort County and the surrounding area . In partnership with Artworks of Cincinnati, Arts Council of Beaufort County Executive Director Eric Holowacz is hosting the porkers through the Labor Day weekend. The pigs made their local debut at the Arts Council's June 11 annual meeting at which pork barbecue was served.

Businesses, organizations and individuals in the community have sponsored the pigs, as in last year's successful "Cows on Vacation" exhibit. See table below for "Big Pig Gig" locations and pictures.

The public can find color "Big Pig Gig" brochures at the Arts Council office (in the University of South Carolina Beaufort Performing Arts Center on Carteret Street; telephone 843/521-4144), as well as at other locations in the community. The USC Book Store will be selling T-shirts, tote bags, ball caps, and posters related to the event. (To print out out a handy Pig Directory location sheet, click here .)

Holowacz reported that a Public Art Fund has been established "to raise dedicated funds for future commissioning of permanent public art" and is seeking sponsors for additional fiberglass pigs that local schools, organizations and artists will create as part of the project. These eight "Beaufort Big Pigs" will be installed over the summer and will remain in the Beaufort community after the "Big Pig Gig" event concludes. For more information on the expected completion dates "Beaufort Big Pigs," contact the Arts Council of Beaufort County by e-mail at pig@ beaufort arts.com.

The Arts Council will be "farming out" these "Beaufort Big Pigs" to smaller communities that may want to sponsor "Mini Pig Gigs" of their own. Contact director Eric Holowacz at pig@ beaufort arts.com for more details.

Sources:

• Harley, Cathy Harter. "Big Pig Gig on Vacation." The Beaufort Gazette, July 1, 2001; p. 1.

• Telephone interview with Eric Holowacz on July 11, 2001.

Big Pig Jig
at the
Port Royal
Community Family Reunion
Paris Avenue, between 8th and 10th Streets

The Town of Port Royal and
The Arts Council of Beaufort County
cordially invite you to a farewell celebration for
Cincinnati's Big Pig Gig Summer Vacation

Followed by Street Dance Celebration
on Paris Avenue

Free and Fun!

"Big Pig Gig" Locations and Pig-tures
Click on pig name or photo for bigger images
& pictures of the pigs in Beaufort!

... or go straight to the Big Pig Gig Photo Gallery,
Beaufort's
"Swine Art" Museum

Name of the Pig		Locations in the Lowcountry Visit these Sow Sites and Pig Places	Cincinnati Sponsors and Owners The Nice Folks Who Loaned a Pig or Two	Local Big Pig Summer Vacation Sponsors Beaufort Benefactors
	Amelia Pig-Art Created by: Students of Jennifer Drydyk	Penn Center, York W. Bailey Museum Lobby (Interior)	Amelia High School	John and Charlene Sprague
	Beaufort Big Pig #1: see TIG Pig
	Beaufort Big Pig #2 TO BE INSTALLED OVER THE SUMMER Created by : Lady's Island Elementary School Art Camp Students; Teachers Christine Kotarsky, Nella Beyer & Ronnette Stewart	West Street Pork Chop	Created by local artists named at left	Lady's Island Elementary School Art Camp, Arts Council of Beaufort County, Beaufort Art Association, Main Street Beaufort
	Beaufort Big Pig #3: Watermel-oink Created by : Lisa Rentz	Craven Street Park	Created by local artist named at left	Renaissance Communities & Charles Ausburn
	Beaufort Big Pig #4 TO BE INSTALLED OVER THE SUMMER Created by: Coosaw Boys & Girls Club	County Complex or Beaufort Boys & Girls Club	Created by local artists named at left	Publix Supermarket Charities
	Beaufort Big Pig #5: Sowolina TO BE INSTALLED OVER THE SUMMER Created by: Del Holt	Gardens Corner Piggly Wiggly	Created by local artist named at left	Piggly Wiggly Carolina, Lowcountry National Bank, University of South Carolina Beaufort, Arts Council of Beaufort County Members
	Beaufort Big Pig #6 TO BE INSTALLED OVER THE SUMMER Created by : Stephanie Johnson & Beaufort High School Students	Alfreda's Sea Islander's Home	Created by local artists named at left	Alfreda's Sea Islander's Home
	Beaufort Big Pig #7 TO BE INSTALLED OVER THE SUMMER Created by : Beaufort Elementary School Students	Beaufort Elementrary School	Created by local artists named at left	Arts Council of Beaufort County, Lowcountry National Bank, Beaufort Art Association, Artists for the Pigs, Mary Whisonant, Visual Arts & Patricia Powers
	Beaufort Big Pig #8 TO BE INSTALLED OVER THE SUMMER Created by : Port Royal Elementary School Students	Port Royal Pig	Created by local artists named at left	Artists for the Pigs, Town of Port Royal, Arts Council of Beaufort County Members
	Big Nutcracker Boy Created by: Chris Paine	Beaufort Museum Courtyard	Blanche Maier	Merrill Lynch
	Blues Brother Created by: Melissa Day	Berry Island and Newpoint Corners on Lady's Island		Newpoint Corners Businesses -- Berry Island, Wellspring Holistic Therapies, New York Life, Monthly Payment Plan, Island Wellness Shoppe, Mystic Blu
	CAM Ham Created by: Patrick Sr., Patrick Jr, and Thomas Romelli	Hilton Head Island Library, 11 Beach City Road (Interior)		Beaufort County Public Library System
	Chamboar of Commerce Created by: Thomas S. Owen	Beaufort Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Center, (Interior)	Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce	Greater Beaufort Chamber of Commerce
	Cured Ham Sandwich Created by: Steve McGowan	Colleton County Memorial Library, Walterboro (Interior)	Ohio Hydralics, Inc.	Piggly Wiggly Carolina, Colleton County Arts Council, Beaufort County Arts Council
	Eleanor Pigsby Created by: Julie A. Burkhardt's Art Students	Beaufort County School District Office	Notre Dame Academy	Fine Arts Office, Beaufort County Schools
	e-piggy.com Created by: Anthony Becker	Town of Port Royal, Paris Avenue at Town Hall	Karen Maier	Town of Port Royal
	Freqoink Flyer Created by: Julia M. Schultz	Beaufort Travel, Oaks Shopping Center, Lady's Island (Interior)	Julia M. Schultz	Beaufort Travel
	Glimmer, Glimmer & Swine Created by: Brian Mehring	Old Post Office Coffeehaus, Port Royal		Piggly Wiggly Carolina and Lowcounty National Bank
	Ham & Swiss on Rye to Go Created by: Peter N. Kurias	Beaufort Memorial Hospital	Liz and Jaime Nunez	Howell, Gibson, and Hughes, P. A.
	Hamlich Maneuver Created by: Lynn Judd	Ridgepointe Square, Ridgeland		Cultural Council of Jasper County
	Hammin' on Main Created by: Barbara Ahlbrand	Mall at Shelter Cove, Hilton Head Island (Interior)	Pepsi Cola Bottlers, Inc.	Mall at Shelter Cove, Hilton Head Island
	Hogtoberfest Created by: Nagel Middle School	Ridgepointe Square, Ridgeland	Tom Whittington	Town of Ridgeland
	In the Piginning Created by: Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy	Lowcountry National Bank, Lady's Island	Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy	Lowcountry National Bank, Artists for the Pigs, Beaufort Art Association
	Mason Dixon Swine Created by: Suzanne L. Fisher	On the hoof: Various interior locations around Beaufort County	Suzanne Steele	Beaufort Art Association, Visual Arts & Patricia Powers. Rhett House Inn, Harriet Keyserling, Lowcountry Weekly, Arts Council Members, Charles Street GAllery/Lyalls & Georgia Phillips
	Miss Sowciety Created by: Lynn Judd	Verdier House, 2nd floor piazza	Melody Sawyer Richardson	Historic Beaufort Foundation
	Paddle Squealer Created by: Chris Reiff	Waterfront Park	Dan Tscheiner	Spring Island Residents
	Pig Appeal Created by: Josiane Trageser	Beaufort City Hall Lobby	Judy Schwartz	Svalina Law Firm
	Pig Dreams Created by: Brian Joiner	Beaufort County Public Library 311 Scott Street Beaufort (Interior/Lobby)	Acme Construction Services	Beaufort County Public Library
	Pigasus Created by: Lynn Judd	Barnwell Bluff at Boundary Street	Creekwood Construction	City of Beaufort and Mayor Bill Rauch, Main Street Beaufort, Lowcountry Weekly, K. C. Newnham & Company, Harriet Keyserling, Twice Baked Bread Company, Sea Island Wine & Provisions
	Pigbird Created by: Jeff Hensley and Kevin O'Grady	Islands Community Bank at Highways 21 and 170	kforce.com	Islands Community Bank
	Pigment of our Imagination Created by: Students of Charlotte Skurow and Gail Wissel, assisted by Gayke Shova	Coastal Discovery Museum, Hilton Head Island (Interior)	Edwin H. Green Intermediate School	Kennickell Print & Communications
	Pigtisse Created by: Holly Schapker	Cannon Park at Bay and Carteret Streets		Artists for the Pigs -- J. Alexandra Sharma, Roger L. Steele, Rebecca Davenport, Juxtaposition, Bay Street Gallery, Mary Whisonant
	Plantapigamongus Created by: Ken Page	Logan Park, Bay Street by Beaufort Elementary School	Susan Schneider	Leslie & Chery Ann Hendricks, Rhett House Inn, Lowcountry Real Estate, The Beaufort Gazette, Stephen C. Leverton, Shirley and Mike Baitz, Shirley Parsons
	Self Porktrait Created by: Vicki Lanzador & Ayer Elementary Students	Mall at Shelter Cove, Hilton Head Island (Interior)		Mall at Shleter Cove, Hilton Head Island
	Sowmwhere over the Rainbow Created by: Students of Susan Vater, Anderson High School	Lowcountry Medical Group, Shell Point/ Port Royal	Ken Rankle	Town of Port Royal
	Sowtue of Liberty Created by: Susan Siegman & Karen Ballinger	Parris Island Recreation Building	AAA of Cincinnati	B. Gen. J. J. McMenamin, B. Gen. Stephen Cheney (Ret.), City of Beaufort, Town of Port Royal, Publix Supermarket Charities
	Swinescraper Created by: GBBN Architects	University of South Carolina Beaufort Performing Arts Center	Rob Ratterman	University of South Carolina Beaufort Bookstore
	This Little Piggy Went to Market Created by: Deborah Pille	Old Bay Market Place	Nan Stafford, Remke Markets	Businesses of Old Bay Market Place
	TIG Pig Created by : Del Holt	Triangle Ice/ Broad River Bridge	Del Holt	Triangle Ice & Gas Company
	Wake Up and Smell the Bacon Created by: Lynn Rose	Perimeter Walk, Highway 170		The Stores at Perimeter Walk -- Furniture Warehouse, The Patio Shoppe, Rugs-n-More, The Baby's Room, Accents, Bedsmart
	Bonus Pigs "Unofficial" Piglets about Town
	Mr. Hogpodge Created by: Students of Beaufort Elementary School	Located inside Beaufort Elementary School (1800 Prince Street, Beaufort)
	Luau Pig	Located inside Beaufort County Public Library (311 Scott Street, Beaufort), home of Pig Dreams

(Sources for above images cited on the "Photo Gallery" pages)

See also:
Swine Finder! Big Pig Gig maps to print out & take along ... .

Pig Pork-Folio
General Information
about Pigs
by
Dennis Adams
Information Services Coordinator
Beaufort County Public Library System

		Pigs (family Suidae, genus Sus, species scrofa,) are members of the order Artiodactyla (hooved animals with even numbers of toes), including antelopes, camels, deer, goats, hippos, pronghorns, sheep, wild cattle and chevrotains -- small, hornless deer-like mammals. The Encyclopedia of Mammals traced wild pigs' natural distribution from across Europe southward to Africa, and eastward to Japan and the islands of Southeast Asia. Domesticated pigs quickly revert to the savage ways of their ancestors once they escape into the wild.
"I oink, therefore I ham." ~ René Desporcs

Swine have always been with us. William F. Allman (in "The First Humans," U. S. News and World Report; February 27, 1989) wrote that Homo habilis, the first true human being, shared his East African habitat with pigs over 1.85 million years ago. In Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, Brian Hesse, citing evidence of domesticated pigs as early as the seventh millennium B. C., said that "wild pigs were widely distributed in the well-watered regions of the ancient Near East." Hogs ate and behaved differently than other livestock, so their keepers pursued an occupation apart from shepherds, goatherds and cattle breeders. The payoff was that pigs bred very fast and helped wanderers establish themselves in new settlements (the early Philistines were big-time pig farmers). Wild boars first came into North America with ancient human immigrants from Asia.

The Chinese, wrote Reay Tannahill in Food in History, liked pigs because they ate scraps from the table, matured within a year, produced two litters of as many as twelve piglets each year, and shared the same roof with their keepers. "Meat" and "pork" are one word in the Chinese language.

Some words in the English language pertain to pigs and pigs alone, as these examples from the Illustrated Reverse Dictionary (edited by John Elliston Kahn) and the Enyclopedia Americana illustrate:

SHOAT: a newly-weaned pig.

DAM: the female parent of those piglets.

GILT: a young sow or female piglet that has not yet produced a litter.

FARROW: a group of pigs produced ar a single birth, also LITTER. The verb, TO FARROW, is what happens when pigs give birth.

PURTENANCE: pig offal used in cooking, also FRY, HASLET, PLUCK.

CHAP: pig's cheek or jaw, used as food.

PETTITOES or TROTTERS: pig's feet, used as food.

BARROW: a male pig castrated when young.

STAG: a male pig castrated when mature.

WASH: garbage used to feed pigs, also SLOP, SWILL.

MAST: beech nuts and acorns used as pig feed.

And one of our library patrons recalls that farmers in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley called piglets "BACON SPROUTS" in the earlier half of the 20th century.

According to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, 19,308,000,000 pounds of pork were produced (an 18,945,000,000 consumed) nationally in 1999. In 2000, there were 59.4 million hogs and pigs on American farms, with a total value of 4.3 billion dollars. The South Carolina Agricultural Service reported a statewide hog and pig inventory of 300,000 for 1997 (no figures were given for Beaufort County "to avoid disclosure of individual operations" or because any inventory was "insignificant").

Let these swinish sayings from Burton Stevenson (The Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar Phrases) and Gregory Y. Titelman (Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings) round off our discussion:

A THING … ANY PIG WOULD KNOW (that is, "Something very commonly known") was a Greek proverb repeated by Plato around 375 B. C.

NEITHER CAST YE YOUR PEARLS BEFORE SWINE is from Matthew 7:6.

DON'T BUY A PIG IN A POKE ("Don't buy anything without carefully examining it") dates back to an English collection of proverbs published in 1546 and first appeared in the North American colonies in 1732. "Poke" is an old Dutch word for "sack." In the German saying ("Die Katze im Sack kaufen"), the animal is a cat instead of a pig. A variant from 1400, "When me profereth the pigge, open the poghe," means "Seize the opportunity."

IF A PIG HAD WINGS, IT COULD FLY ("What you say is just wishful thinking") is first attested in 1862 (in Proverbs of Scotland), though Lewis Carroll's Walrus asked "whether pigs had wings" three years later in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In 1639, John Clarke wrote that "Pigs fly in the air with their tails forward."

PIGS ARE PIGS ("Bad people are bad people, wherever they come from") goes back to 1822. But Samuel Johnson (1784) said, "Pigs are a race unjustly calumniated. Pig has, it seems, not been wanting to man, but man to pig. We do not allow time for his education: we kill him at a year old."

PIGS MAY WHISTLE, BUT THEY HAE AN ILL MOUTH FOR IT
( Henderson, Scottish Proverbs, 1832).

THE WORST HOG LIGHTS ON THE BEST PEAR
(Torriano, 1666).

Sausage Links: Web "Sow Sites"

• Big Pig Gig The official home page of the Cincinnati pigfest. Find photos of the original 400+ fiberglass hogs, sows and piglets.

• The Pork Intelligencer Read the "Online Swine Grapevine" of the Seattle "Pigs on Parade" event.

• Breeds of Livestock, from the Department of Animal Science at Oklahoma State University, has pictures and facts on many varieties of swine.
  
  
• Pig Latin "Translation": Bell Labs Text-to-Speech Synthesis Enter any combination of words or cut-and-paste a text to hear synthesized pig latin renditions. This "fun aside of a serious Bell Labs project" lets you choose a voice type (man, woman or child) and speed (fast, normal, slow)!
  
  Pig Latin translation of above: (Ig-pay Atin-lay "Anslation-tray": Ell-bay Abs-lay Ext-tay-ootay-Eech-spay Ynthesis-say
  Enter-ay any-hay ombination-cay of-ay urds-way or-ay utcay-and-ay-ayst-pay a-hay ext-tay oo-tay ear-hay ynthesized-say ig-pay atin-lay enditions-ray. Iss-thay "un-fay aside-ay of-ay a-hay erious-say Ell-Bay Abs-lay oject-pray" ets-lay oo-yay ooze-chay a-yay oice-vay ipe-tay (an-may, ooman-way or-ay iled-chay) and-ay eed-spay (ast-fay, ormal-nay, oh-slay )!

Sold during the Event by University of South Carolina Beaufort Book Store Sandstone Building 801 Carteret Street Beaufort, SC 29902 TEL: 843/521-4120

Our Big Pig Gig Web Team:
Beaufort photos by Michael Broam & Scott Strawn
Web Page by Dennis Adams