ARTS & CULTURE
Renowned architect and St. Pete resident Yann
Weymouth contributed a goat.
Sponsor a Goat
organizations and individuals like Candy DeBartolo
(wife of former San Francisco 49ers owner Eddie
DeBartolo Jr.), Epicurean Hotel, Reeves Import
Motor Cars, Famous Tate Appliance & Bedding
Centers, Sun Toyota Collision Center and Yann &
Susana Weymouth. Sponsoring a goat (which
ranges from $5,000 to $10,000 each) allows you
to display that goat in your place of business
or other location throughout 2020, and your
sponsorship dollars are also credited towards the
sponsorships, and other details may be found at
www.peacelovegoats.org.
11 May/June 2020 StPeteLifeMag.com
After 30 years in the corporate world
(PricewaterhouseCoopers and Tampa
Bay Lightning primarily), Rob Canton
and his wife Debbie were ready for
greener pastures. They moved out to
Thonotosassa and started a goat farm.
But they wanted to do something
more than raise goats, they wanted to
help the less fortunate, in particular
disadvantaged children.
The Cantons created the Grady Goat
Foundation named after a young
blind and deaf goat on the farm,
and with Debbie by his side, started
raising funds for various charities.
They purchased a van to transport
their critters to places like the Ronald
McDonald House where kids got to be
with kids. Rob had heard about goat
yoga and he and Debbie decided to
give it a try. Despite the location, they
now get people from across the state
who come to the farm to do cats,
cows and down-dogs with goats every
every weekend. Social distancing is
Around November of 2018, Rob got
the idea for a goat-focused public
art project for charity, but Project
GOAT itself, which stands for Global
formalized until March of 2019.
“I read a blog post by Bill Gates about
how goats are empowering women
in the poorest parts of India,” he said.
“India is known as a top location in the
there give these otherwise destitute
women and their families a means to
make a living through goat products
like meat, cheese and milk, and also
careers as caretakers for the 150
million goats living in that country. I
had an epiphany. I wanted to combine
our love for goats and the arts to
spread awareness about this terrible
crime taking place across the globe.”
Canton had seen the attention given
to painted dolphins, manatees, pigs
and elephants in other cities, so why
not goats, he thought. He started
making calls and he and Debbie
raised $100,000 in funding through
Grady Goat Foundation’s charity
goat yoga classes to get the project
artist Scott Joseph Moore of Moore
Art Expressions in St. Petersburg
to design and cast the 80-pound
sculptures on bases.
Once word got out in his circle of
friends and business associates, the
calls started coming in. Rob invited
both prominent and emerging artists
across Tampa Bay to paint goats. He
was blown away by the response.
The goats are as varied as the 55
artists who painted them. Some are
hauntingly surreal with messages of
human bondage; others are colorful
and gay. There are biker goats, pirate
goats, a New York Yankees goat and
include nationally renowned St. Pete
muralists BASK and Bekky Beukes,
PHOTOS /MARCIA BIGGS
/www.peacelovegoats.org
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