We can indeed provide you with website details of the local company that created those animal sculptures, but first some back story, courtesy of a previous QoD on the same subject. What follows is the answer that we ran on 6/1/2012 in response to a similar question (but without the added dimension about actually wanting to purchase one of these metal beasties, which we'll get to later). Here's what we wrote back then:
According to a study conducted back in 2010, the I-15 linking Las Vegas to Los Angeles was deemed the deadliest stretch of highway in America, with close to 600 fatalities having occurred over the previous decade and a half among the 8 million people who drive back and forth every year from southern Nevada to southern California.
That report was hardly news to the Nevada Department of Transportation, which the previous year had already approved an ambitious construction project aimed at easing congestion and improving access and safety on the I-15 south corridor. The estimated $250+ million I-15 South Design-Build project targeted the stretch between Blue Diamond Road and Tropicana Avenue and called for a widening of the I-15 to four lanes in each direction, improvements to off-ramps and overpass bridges, a new Sunset Road bridge, and the addition of one-way collector-distributor roadways to improve traffic flow on interchanges. Three percent of the budget, which is largely being funded by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority using room taxes, was dedicated to landscaping, including the addition of 40 animal statues made from weathered steel that were unveiled earlier this year.
While distracted driving has been cited as one of the main causes of the regular crashes on this stretch of road, studies have proven that landscaping along freeways actually reduces accidents, with public art and attractive plants credited with having a calming effect on motorists that causes them to slow down. There's also anecdotal evidence that such improvement schemes even deter graffiti and other vandalism. Hence, the I-15's new metallic menagerie, which comprises 9- to 11-foot tall native creatures, including horses, burros, big horn sheep, and coyotes, set in a landscape peppered with (actual) indigenous plants such as yuccas, creosote brush, and white bursage, in the main salvaged and relocated from other construction sites around the valley. The sculptures, which weigh about a ton each and take approximately 120 hours to create, are coated with a special aging treatment for that timeless look (it also makes it easy to brush off paint, should any unwelcome graffiti appear). They're bolted to concrete pads, too, so there should be no danger of your vehicle being hit by a giant sheep during a flash flood (or of these pieces being stolen) and the weathered-metal effect is also graffiti-resistant (in that if someone paints on an animal, it can simply be brushed off).
So there's the background. Further investigation has revealed that the company commissioned to create the sculptures was locally based P&S Metals and Supply Company, and that the contract came just at the right time, when their usual line of construction work was suffering thanks to the Great Recession, and actually required them to hire an additional 12 workers. Explained owner Gene Perry in an interview with the Las Vegas Sun, "Not many places in Las Vegas are able to do this type of metal work. If we hadn’t taken this job it would have been done in California or Utah." And artwork was a novelty to P&S, which tends to specialize in the less-romantic field of structural supports and other construction elements not usually seen by the general public. "This is the first time we’ve had something we can look at and say 'isn’t that nice,'" Perry told the paper.
How much a one-ton, custom-created big horn sheep might set you back, we wouldn't hazard a guess at, but from what we've read and seen on their website, P&S Metals and Supply seems like an amenable outfit and likely would be happy and flattered that you're interested in taking a piece of their Nevada artwork home with you, so we suggest you give Gene Perry a call and see how it goes from there. The number's (702) 367-1701, or (800) 456-0530 if you're calling from out of state. We suspect your biggest challenge may well be transporting it to wherever you reside. If you follow through with this, do please drop us a line and let us know how it all worked out (this writer might like to ship a sheep to her mom in the UK!)
In the meantime, for those not familiar with the animals we're referring to, you can click here to see view a gallery of the sculptures and the creative process behind them.
