Lisbon art teacher Keri Speidel is one of the artists who has their work featured in the recent Herky’s on Parade released in May 2024. Speidel’s artwork is located outside of Scheel’s Sporting Goods in Coral Ridge Mall. Speidel’s statue “Gone Fishin’” is in honor of her late father, and features one of the fishing rods he used to fish at his favorite lake, Lake McBride.
Iowa City resident and Cornell College student Cameron Reimers also has a Herky on Parade in 2024. Reimers is a bio-chemistry and molecular biology major at Cornell.
“When I am not working in the science building on Cornell’s campus, I enjoy attending Iowa sporting events and creating art,” Reimers said. “I’ve been taking classes from a young age, and painting a Herky has always been a dream of mine. My family comes from a farming background, and they are my inspiration for everything.”
Reimers created Golden Hour Herky, which is on display at University Heights Community Center at 1300 Melrose Avenue, Iowa City.
For the third edition of Herky On Parade, more than 260 potential designs were submitted from 150 different artists.
Chosen artists had their blank Herky statues delivered in December and had until March to complete their projects.
Josh Schamberger, president of Think Iowa City and the organizer of Herky On Parade, said at a media event Monday that at the end of the day, artists submit ideas and concepts, but it’s really the sponsors that pick the designs that they find most entertaining to their business or their organization.
“ … Obviously everybody in the state really loves Herky. So, it’s a lot of fun to do this and see all of the designs and concepts come to life. And you know, the magic is from the artists. I mean, this wouldn’t be any event if we didn’t have just incredible artists,” Schamberger said.
Schamberger added he originally aimed to create 75 Herky statues to commemorate Herky’s birthday, but that soon was changed.
“I only wanted to do 75 Herkies, but there was so much demand. And when we did this in ‘04, we did 75. And then when I did it in 2014, we did 84,” he said. “So when we got to 75, our collective team was like, Josh, come on, you can do 25 more. And so we did 25 more.”
–Additional reporting provided by Kate Perez of The Daily Iowan

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--Submitted photo

Cornell sophomore Cameron Reimers has a Herky on Parade entitled "Golden Hour Herky" located outside University Heights Community Center in Iowa City.