Daddy-O: Iguana Heads and Texas Tales

by Kent Zimmerman, Keith Zimmerman, Bob Wade

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312134592
• ISBN13: 9780312134594
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 212 Pages
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

A zany autobiography to go with the character

To quote from the afterword "Texas culture, in which Bob "Daddy-O" Wade is certainly a leading, not to say Olympian figure, has long been regarded by some pointy-headed intellectuals as an oxymoron." Quite correctly the afterword goes on to dispel this jaundiced view and give Bob "Daddy-O" Wade full credit for the gargantuan Texan art works he has produced.Bob Wade resides and was born in Austin, Texas in 1943. He received a BFA from the University of Texas Austin and an M.A. from the University of California Berkeley.The story starts with Bob's childhood days and his very early introduction to motor scooters and automobiles in Texas. Then the hilarity of the book really starts - not with "Texas Tales" as per the title - but the much more exciting Mexican Tales. Imagine the fun that he and his young buddies had over the border in Juarez where the legal drinking age is "sorta sixteen" and a quart jug of Bacardi rum was about 99 cents. A sexual experience didn't cost much more. Wow, foreign countries are often so much more fun than your own.Then continuing in this very frank and clearly honest vein, Bob takes us through his days at university and through his career. His work includes giant size sculptures for display as public art. The best known was probably a giant iguana which resided during its heydays on the roof of the Lone Star café in New York. Then there's the pair of cowboy boots all of 40 feet tall installed in the front of a mall in San Antonio, Texas. My favourite was probably the beautiful 70-foot tall saxophone which included the body of a Volkswagen beetle, an old surfboard and several galvanised cattle troughs. "Daddy-O" tries to make his massive sculptures from scrap materials salvaged from whatever source may be available. The wonderful swarthy Mexican waiter with his sombrero, tray of nachos and a giant chilli was largely recycled from its own ancestor, a clean-cut white guy hamburger waiter. Being an art teacher / professor he also utilises his students to help with the projects. He gets the help and they get the experience. "Daddy-O" is not your "easel and palette" artist but one who relies on welding, rigging, cranes, scaffolding, compressors, nuts and bolts, power tools and the like to build his public art. Often the common link is urethane foam, discovered by Bob in his early days at Berkeley and never forgotten. It almost defines his work.Another link is the not infrequent outcries against his work from local councils, communities or the like. Objections are generally made when such people feel that the sculpture lowers the tone of the area or may attract "undesirables" to the locale. The legal arguments tend to claim that the objects do not comply with the many pieces of legislation applying to signs. The defence is always that they are not signs at all, and indeed bear no relationship to signs. They are demonstrably works of art, designed and erected with love and care, for the public well-being and general benefit of o