Bob Wade (artist) facts for kids

Wade with HOG sculpture

Bob "Daddy-O" Wade (born January 6, 1943 – died December 23, 2019) was a famous American artist from Austin, Texas. He was a big part of the Texas "Cosmic Cowboy" culture in the 1970s. Wade was known for making fun, oversized sculptures of Texas symbols. He also created large, hand-colored photo canvases from old pictures. Some of his art was shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art. One of his most famous pieces was "Iggy," a giant iguana 40-foot-long (12 m) and weighing 2600 pounds. "Iggy" sat on top of the Lone Star Cafe in New York City from 1978 to 1989. Today, "Iggy" lives on top of the Fort Worth Zoo's Burnett Animal Health Science Center, greeting visitors.

Bob Wade's Early Life and Art Journey

Robert Schrope Wade was born in Austin, Texas, on January 6, 1943. His father managed hotels, so Wade grew up in many different Texas cities. This early life in hotels made him interested in the unique art and signs found along American roads.

As a boy, he met his cowboy hero, Roy Rogers, who was a cousin of his mother. In high school in El Paso, Wade joined a car club. He would go to Juarez, Mexico, to find skilled people to customize his hot rod car.

When Bob came to Austin in 1961 to study at the University of Texas, he drove an old, customized Ford Crown Victoria hot rod. His slicked-back hair and cool El Paso style earned him the nickname "Daddy-O" from his fraternity friends.

He studied art, especially sculpture, under teachers like Charles Umlauf. Wade also learned from other Austin artists such as William Lester and Robert Levers. After graduating from UT, he earned a Master's degree in painting at the University of California at Berkeley. There, he connected his unique Texas style with the "Funk art" movement on the West Coast.

From Teacher to Texas Art Star

After his time in Berkeley, Wade came back to Texas to create art and teach. He taught in Waco, Dallas, and the University of North Texas. Wade helped start a small art group in Dallas called the Oak Cliff Four, with artists George Green, Jim Roch, and Jack Mims. They held gallery shows together.

In 1971, an art show called "South Texas Sweet Funk" in Austin brought together many Texas artists. Wade soon started a new art method using photo-emulsion canvases. This quickly got attention in the art world. Wade would transfer old, Texas-themed photos onto large canvases and then hand-color them. These works included pictures of cowboy bands and his well-known 10-foot-wide canvas, "Cowgirls on Harleys."

For the American Bicentennial celebration, Wade built a huge map of the U.S. in Dallas. It was the size of a football field! Made from plywood, concrete, and earth, it had tiny oil wells, billboards, and replicas of the Great Lakes. You could see it from planes leaving DFW International Airport. This project was even featured in People magazine and made Wade famous.

Wade stopped teaching in 1977 to focus completely on his art. In 1979, he started a series of canvases based on a 1922 postcard of cowgirls. He enlarged the image and hand-tinted it with bright colors. This highlighted the details in the women's faces and clothes. This was Wade's way of honoring the American cowgirl, a popular subject at the time. A book of these works, called Cowgirls, was published in 1995.

Bob Wade: Texas Art Ambassador

Bob Wade became like an ambassador for Texas culture through his art. He shared Texas art with people across the country and even internationally. In 1976, he went back to San Francisco to create a Texas honky-tonk (a type of bar) inside the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He also hung a stuffed rodeo horse on a wall for an exhibition in Los Angeles.

In 1977, he turned the state of Texas into a roadside attraction for the French! He created his "Texas Mobile Home Museum" for the Paris Biennale art show. Documentaries like "Jackelope" and "Too High, Too Long and Too Wide" also featured Wade's art and his road trips across Texas.

In 1979, Wade made a pair of giant cowboy boots for an art project in Washington D.C. He chose cowboy boots because "Western chic was a huge trend." The boots were nearly 40-foot-tall (12 m) and were made from donated materials. They stood on an empty lot near the White House.

In January 1980, the boots were supposed to be taken down. But a company asked for them for a shopping mall in Texas. So, the boots were moved to San Antonio's North Star Mall, where they still stand today. They are a beloved landmark and hold the Guinness World Record for the largest cowboy boot structure.

Bob Wade's Later Years

Bob Wade continued to create his unique art until he passed away in 2019. In June 2010, he celebrated the installation of his famous Iguana sculpture at the Fort Worth Zoo. A special show of his work was held at the South Austin Museum of Popular Culture in 2009.

Wade lived and worked in Austin, Texas. You can find his art at The Grove, a public art area in Fort Worth. This outdoor sculpture, installed in 2016, celebrates the area's history. It is made from old amusement park rides and playground equipment.

The Texas Book Festival chose Wade's artwork, "Let ’er Rip," for its 2020 festival poster. It showed a vintage cowgirl riding a giant, bucking Texas horned frog. In his last months, Wade worked with over forty artists and writers on a book. It featured pictures and stories of more than a hundred of his most famous artworks. The book was published in November 2020, ten months after he died.

Bob Wade's Family Life

Bob Wade was married twice and had two daughters. He met his second wife, Lisa Sherman, in 1982, and they married in 1989.

Public Art by Bob Wade

Most of Bob Wade's public art can be found in Texas. Here is a list of some of his famous works:

• Funny Farm Family – Located at the Art Center, McLennan Community College, Waco, Texas. This piece uses colorful bomb casings and steel.
• Dancing Frogs – Found near Carl's Corner, Texas. These six frogs were first made for a nightclub in Dallas.
• Dinosaur Bob – At the National Center for Children's Illustrated Literature, Abilene, Texas. This sculpture shows a dinosaur holding a Volkswagen Beetle car in its mouth.
• Giant Prickly Pear Cactus – On the roof of Leal's Mexican Restaurant, Muleshoe, Texas.
• World's Largest Cowboy Boots – At North Star Mall, San Antonio, Texas. These 40-foot-tall (12 m) boots were first put up near the White House in Washington D.C.
• Junkyard Dog – At Alamo City Inc., San Antonio, Texas. The base for this dog is a 1966 Plymouth Fury car standing on end.
• Giant Sixshooter – At Humphreys Gun Shop, Del Rio, Texas. This large gun is made from a barrel, stove pipe, and stucco.
• Smokesax – Once at Billy Blues in Houston. This saxophone is built from a Volkswagen car body, oil field pipe, and a surfboard. It was later given to Houston's Orange Show Center for Visual Art.
• El Salsero – On top of La Salsa restaurant, Malibu, California. Wade changed a giant fiberglass "Muffler Man" into "La Salsa Man" in 1987.
• Lone Star Cafe Iguana – A 40-foot-long (12 m), 12-foot-high (3.7 m) iguana that was on the roof of the Lone Star Cafe in New York City. It is now at the Fort Worth Zoo.

Other artworks include giant armadillos, and a New Orleans Saints helmet made from a Volkswagen Beetle, which is now on top of the Shoal Creek Saloon in Austin, Texas.

Awards and Special Recognition

Bob Wade received three grants from the National Endowment of the Arts. His art was shown in important exhibitions in Paris and New Orleans. His work has been displayed at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Houston Museum of Art, and the Austin Museum of Art. The Fort Worth Star Telegram newspaper called Wade a "pioneer of Texas Funk and connoisseur of Southwestern kitsch."

Images for kids

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  Wade with HOG sculpture

• Http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/images/tx/TXCARfrogs wade.jpg

  Dancing Frogs

• Https://web.archive.org/web/20110715173826/http://media.reporternews.com/media/img/photos/2007/05/07/0508SaveBob2 t607.jpg

  Dinosaur Bob

• Https://www.flickr.com/photos/deanfranklin/3689877774/

  World's Largest Cowboy Boots

• Http://www.humphreysgunshop.com/

  Giant Sixshooter

• Https://www.flickr.com/photos/cosmicworkshop/4005008665/

  Smokesax

• Https://www.flickr.com/photos/usonian/8976030/

  El Salsero

• Http://www.texasescapes.com/TexasArt/Images/5LoneStarCafeIguanaWade.jpg

  Lone Star Cafe Iguana