Thousands of New York professional and amateur artists, as well as school children, competed for a spot to have their cow featured. At the time, Janine was an honor student at Roy H. Mann Junior High School in Brooklyn. She explained, “Ms. Brill, my art teacher, gave our class a picture of a cow and told us to design it in a way that represented New York City. I thought that since another name for New York City is the Big Apple, then I would design my cow to look like an apple and put a stem on her back.” Janine called the cow the Big Cow Apple.

When Janine was informed that hers was one of the winning designs, she explained, “I was so surprised. At first, I thought my idea was too simple!” When the life-size fiberglass cow was delivered to her school, she discovered that painting and preparing it for public display was anything but simple. “I didn’t know it would be so big! I chose two classmates for my team, and for two hours every day after school, for two weeks, we painted and painted. The hardest part was making the stem. I had to construct it out of clay and then weld it onto the back of the cow.”