Daddy-O: Iguana Heads & Texas Tales - Hardcover

Bob Wade; Keith Zimmerman; Kent Zimmerman

9780312134594: Daddy-O: Iguana Heads & Texas Tales

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312134592 ISBN 13: 9780312134594

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 1995

Behind the often outlandish, always fantastic, artistic endeavors of Texas artist Bob "Daddy-O" Wade (second cousin to Roy Rogers) lies a man whose talent and view of the world are as big as Texas itself. When it comes to creating his works, Daddy-O is just as liable to use a pistol as a paintbrush. Here are scores of stories that span a twenty-five-year period, exposing the madness behind the methodology.
Daddy-O adopts a Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn approach to recruiting enough colorful sidekicks and resources to create his larger-than-life projects, such as a forty-foot iguana perched on the top of New York City's Lone Star Cafe, the Giant Dancing Frogs of Dallas, a machine-gunned Mardi Gras art van, or a seventy-foot multi-ton saxophone fashioned from oil-field pipes, hubcaps, beer kegs, a surfboard, and an upside-down Volkswagen Beetle.

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From Publishers Weekly:

Maverick Texas artist Bob Wade has produced a giant sculpture of an iguana, to stand atop the old Lone Star Cafe in New York City; motorized frogs dancing the tango in Dallas; and a Mardi Gras mobile decorated with toy guns (the "Bonnie & Clyde Mobile"). In room-sized installations, velvet paintings of nudes and bullfighters, a football field-sized map of the U.S., a trailer museum stuffed with Texas lore, colorful soft sculptures and experimental photographs and paintings, Wade deflates icons of pop culture and challenges conventional ways of seeing and being. In this irreverent autobiography, a curious mix of bravado and deadpan irony, Wade (writing with Gavin Report reporters Keith and Kent Zimmerman) tells of his El Paso roots, the Berkeley art scene of the mid-1960s, his college teaching career (1966-1977) and his leap into independence. Wade, now a resident of Santa Fe, also recalls his three visits-one at the age of six-with his second cousin, cowboy Roy Rogers. Illustrations.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

It's hard to dislike a person known professionally for more than 30 years as Daddy-0, impossible if said person is also the purveyor of such sublime artworks as a 40-foot-tall iguana, a giant large-mouth bass that blows smoke, and the Day-Glo "Our Lady of Guadelupe." That person is Bob "Daddy-O" Wade--beer drinker, raconteur, and Texan extraordinaire. For those familiar with Wade's work, no further introduction or evaluation is necessary; they'll have to read this book. Those unversed in the wacky world of Wade, however, can start to get a handle on him by thinking of Roy Rogers on acid (not that Wade would: Uncle Roy is one of his icons). Wade's story affords a look at the artist as wild man and is a wonderful contribution to our understanding of the "other" Texas of Kinky Friedman, Linda Ellerbee, Janis Joplin, and the Armadillo World Headquarters. Mike Tribby

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