Bob "Daddy-O" Wade
Bob “Daddy-O” Wade (Texas, 1943-2019) was a prominent figure in the Austin art scene for over four decades. He gained notoriety for his forty-foot-long Iguana sculpture, nicknamed “Iggy,” that formerly donned the Lone Star Cafe in New York City, his Guinness World Record-breaking thirty-five-foot-tall cowboy boots in San Antonio, and his New Orleans Saints helmet, fashioned from an old Volkswagen Beetle, that currently sits atop Shoal Creek Saloon in Central Austin.
After studying under notable artists like Charles Umlauf (Michigan, Texas, 1911-1994) and Everett Spruce (Texas, Arkansas, 1908-2002) at the University of Texas in the 1960s, Bob Wade quickly became a global ambassador to Texas culture, shaping the Texas Chic movement and the Cosmic Cowboy subculture of the 1970s. At the 1977 Paris Biennale, Wade’s “Texas Mobile Home Museum,” a remodeled 1947 Spartan trailer filled with Texas memorabilia, acquainted the French with the Lone Star State.
Wade created the “Iguanamobile” in 1995 to publicize his book “Daddy-O: Iguana Heads and Texas Tails” on a state-wide book tour. This trip is documented in Karen Dinitz’s 1999 documentary “Too High, Too Wide, and Too Long.” The travel-trailer-turned-sculpture was then sold to the late Kevin Williamson (Texas, 1962-2021), a close friend who collaborated with Wade for his downtown Austin restaurant, Ranch 616. The “Iguanamobile” exemplifies Bob Wade’s unique ability to capture Texas’ larger-than-life cultural mythology by magnifying its most iconic symbols.
