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Right, sculptor Tony Diaz puts up a giant trainer in Camden Town yesterday (Wednesday) |
US footballer is latest sculpture to get boot
Iconic street art disappearing as street loses sports giant
A GIANT American footballer whose eagle eyes kept close watch over shoppers on Camden High Street has touched down for the last time.
The red and white fibreglass sportsman, whose four metre-tall frame was suspended above cocktail bar Henry J Bean’s for five years, has been taken down – a symbol of the gradual disappearance of Camden’s famous street sculptures.
But instead of joining the scrapheap of the street’s other lost figures – including those of a giant leather jacket, Elvis, an Indian chieftain, an angel, a fly and a motorbike – the sculpture, which cost £5,000 in 2000, is set to go on sale.
The quarterback has been salvaged by the artist responsible for creating the rest of Camden Town’s curious sculptures.
Tony Diaz, who created the street’s oversized chair, airplane, alley cat, Doc Marten boot and trainers, is storing the footballer in his Essex workshop.
He said: “If no one buys it, we’ll put it on ebay.”
In its heyday, Camden displayed 23 of Mr Diaz’s sculptures. One by one they have slowly disappeared.
Mr Diaz, 59, blames this on the lack of investment in their upkeep.
He said: “There were 23 there at one time. Now only a few people are doing it.
“It’s a great shame. It’s part of Camden’s identity and it would be nice to do them all.
“The way Camden is, the people never really spend the money and they don’t look after them. I know they don’t spend money on the upkeep. They spend on the rent and rates, but not on the look of the shop.”
Mr Diaz progressed from shopfitting to making the very first sculpture, a papier mache cowboy boot 15 years ago.
These days he uses weatherproof polystyrene.
He said: “We were designing and fitting out shops and I said ‘What about doing a boot for the Bootstore?’ and it took off from there. From that all the other shops came on line.
“Pigeons are a problem. Eventually their claws eat into the sculptures so we’ve had to put spikes in the top of them.”
Mr Diaz has now been commissioned to create a Chinese dragon to replace the footballer, at the request of Stan Cheung, who is turning the bar into an oriental buffet.
Mr Cheung, of Swiss Cottage, who opens Max Orient this week, said: “We’re an Oriental buffet so we thought the footballer wouldn’t be appropriate.
“When I looked around I saw everyone had put up a statue to match their service so I would like to do the same.” |
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