I live in Katoomba, a town replete with cafes and art galleries. Not to mention art galleries with cafes in them. And cafes with little art displays.
This kind of town tends to breed sculptors, and that subcategory of sculptor who's good enough with a welder to make sculptures but not good enough to get a proper job (OK, some of them are true MIG poets, but most aren't) tends to produce weird garden art.
They didn't necessarily mean it to be garden art in the first place. But they couldn't sell it, and it was really big and pointy, and their wives were perfectly clear that it wasn't going to stay in the front room no matter how much they enjoyed opening their beers on it, so out in the garden it went.
I'm not really a fan of the usual whimsical googly-eyed-giraffe-made-out-of-springs kind of welded sculpture.
(Though I much prefer it to what one gallery not far from here has out front - a life-sized 3D replica of the screaming horse from Picasso's Guernica. Dear god.)
But I could, in certain circumstances, be persuaded to make an exception.
It would appear to be to scale with the original actor, if not even bigger. It's not cheap, but great art never is, is it?
(If you're reading this after the auction page is gone, it was from this eBay seller, and I've archived the page here.)
I realise that not all men would want this thing. I further realise that women who would also like it do exist.
I do not, however, feel I am being unfairly stereotypical by pointing out that it is (a) awesome and (b) perfectly acceptable grounds for divorce.
3 March 2007 at 8:04 am
Good god! I don't even want to guess how long this took to create. This is what happens when geeks take up welding.
3 March 2007 at 10:51 am
i was in thailand middle of last year and you can purchase these, plus the alien from funny enough, Aliens, and a miriad of other movie characters (R2D2 was common, as well as C3PO)from just about every town / city.
the going rate was around $1000 AUD plus shipping.
Alot of people i saw in these places were purchasing container loads for stores.
if you can fit something like this in your house/backyard, and don't mind reinforcing your foundations, its cheaper to fly to thailand choose your favourite 2 pieces and have them shipped home.
5 March 2007 at 4:24 am
Definitely an asian mass product, I've seen it in Germany too. Unfortunately no geek welders involved here, just chinese businessmen with an acute sense for the white trash culture.
5 March 2007 at 8:38 pm
Comments 2 & 3 really, really creep me out. Some kind of horrid blend of embarrasment of my own culture (us-euro-centric Western) and (likely - I haven't seen these with my own eyes, but I been to those places and know how much they don't get paid) near slave-labour conditions for the poor sods who weld these things.
Sorry to be pessimistic, but roll on global climate change' hopefully it will be enough to wipe our sorry excuse for a species off the planet.
Makes me want to go an read a few Stephen Baxter novels. :-(
5 March 2007 at 8:40 pm
And maybe I'll learn to type neatly before then. :-P
5 March 2007 at 10:52 pm
"Chinese Factory Worker Can't Believe The Shit He Makes For Americans" :-)
The above revelations were somewhat unsettling news to me, too.
I'm definitely not of the opinion that those funny little yellow people should be glad of the chance to work, and they're not like us, don't you know, so you really can't apply the same standards, blah blah blah.
On the other hand, I'm also not going to jump to the conclusion that dudes in Thailand who make a living by lashing together unlicensed sci-fi statues for dumb Westerners are, necessarily, living a lousy life as a result. Maybe they're making a decent living wage, and maybe they aren't. This isn't one of those giant Chinese clothing factories full of almost-enslaved peasant girls and fighting tooth and nail with other factories for the favour of amoral Western megacorps, so there would appear to be plenty of room for a decent boss to pay decent wages to his at-least-somewhat-skilled employees.
14 September 2007 at 8:17 am
Theres a store here in Glasgow called Red5 which sells all manner of gadgets and things for us geeks. It has a scale Xenomorph in its window made in the exact same fashion! it also has a smaller scale predator that has bike chains for dreadlocks AND a small Star Destroyer and Scout Trooper on Speeder bike.
19 August 2014 at 4:20 pm
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