Bigfoot Christmas statue… continued
Posted by: Rick Noll on January 3rd, 2006
I decided to go up and check out the studio of the artist who made my Bigfoot statue. He is up on Hwy 2, Stevens Pass, in Washington, just east of Gold Bar. His name is Nyal Thomas. After 911, he carved a firefighters scene and it now sits outside of Squad I in New York City. He has carved things like Hockey players for the owners of teams. He is quite good and enters competitions all over the world.
I saw some of his finished work and that of his students, since he teaches the art at his ranch style studio, and has them all there for sale.
He told me that he has decided to do another Bigfoot statue but this time a true giant. He doesn’t know what he is going to do with it yet but if it is anything like the one I now have, I would say a museum.
A home made sign at a road side cafe warns us that we should be on the look-out. I guess the sign works both ways… for the real animal and the many statues along the road. Hwy 2 sports other attempts at carving Bigfoot like figures out of the local wood, which is preferably cedar. Here are some images I collected on my trip this past weekend… not specifically for this reason though.
This one seems to be an original but is piecemealed together. It needs a little help in standing upright right now but you have to give it a break; New Years was just 2 days ago. This one is about 9 feet tall.
Here you can see that the feet, from the ankles up, were made separate.
And further up the road, here we have Harry from the Henderson’s movie. This statue commemorates the 1986 film site. Both Rene Dahinden and Cliff Crook helped with the movie. The owner of this drive through coffee stop owns a Harry costume and has been known to climb in it and run across the road giving motorists a need to stop and get a cup of Java.
About Rick Noll
Rick Noll has been actively searching for the Sasquatch since 1969 and continues his pursuit with extended field trips into the Pacific Northwest's most remote regions. Rick has worked with Peter Byrne, René Dahinden, Grover Krantz, John Green, Jeff Meldrum and the BFRO during all this. He helped with many documentaries on the subject including Animal X: The Skookum Expedition and Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science.
Thank you for that Harry statue info at the actual site of the filming of the motion picture. Few people know about that.
A side note to “Harry and the Henderson’s” movie, Rene once told me that he met with Spielberg, the deal he struck was for everything he had to decorate the set at $10,000. After the show, to Rene’s surprise, they returned everything at no cost to him.
Visiting Cliff crook in his home I noticed a big framed picture of Cliff and Harry on a wooded set. I don’t know how much material Cliff leased to them, or his deal, but he did have quite a bit of material.