Philly’s Patty Bigfoot

This week Philadelphia-area resident and Cryptomundo reader Joe Hudak was at the Philly Car Show. He was passing a shop window located, he recorded, at 12th and Filbert in Center City, Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Primate Love.

Being a good Cryptomundian, with his camera at the ready, Joe took the following picture of the object he saw through the window.

Clearly this “thing” looks like “Patty,” even to the creation of a backdrop complete with foliage to make it appear to be in the midst of a peaceful Bluff Creek scene.

But why does it look so very familiar? Could it be, perhaps, you say, a creation we’ve viewed before? One made in direct imitation of Patty?

Is it Cameron Gainer’s sculpture, last seen in a Long Island park? Did Gainer bring it inside for the winter and move it to Philadelphia? Or are there two of them now? Or is this merely just another good copy of Patty that now exists?

Oh, my, your overwhelmed cryptozoologist just came across a press release sent to Cryptomundo in January, to wit:

The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) is pleased to announce “Forest Through The The Trees,” an exhibition by New York based artist Cameron Gainer….

Gainer is an emerging artist and a graduate of the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. He works with photo, video, and multiple media in his sculptures. The Bigfoot sculpture on display at The Fabric Workshop and Museum is part of a series exploring myth and urban legend. It is one of three public commissions, which also include a sculpture of Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster for the Salt Marsh Nature Preserve in Brooklyn, and an upcoming project at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum.

Standing over six feet tall, Gainer’s “Forest Through The The Trees” is a life-size embodiment of Bigfoot as captured in the famous Patterson-Gimlin Film. He has recreated frame 352 of the film, which shows the creature in its iconic mid-stride glance at the camera, as a three-dimensional sculpture. It is made from a steel and fiberglass skeleton, covered with faux fur and modeling compound, and has a pair of piercing glass eyes. It is also meant to be a “photo-op prop” that allows the viewer to be a participant in the project as re-creator of the original film footage or perpetuator of it as a supposed hoax. The work was originally shown at Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens in 2006.

The Fabric Workshop and Museum also will be displaying a wall-sized photo reproduction of Gainer’s Nessie sculpture and will be screening “In Person,” his 2005 video project, which was shot at a look-alike convention in Las Vegas. In conjunction with the exhibition, The Fabric Workshop and Museum is offering a limited edition of artist multiples available at the Museum Shop. These silk scarves feature images of fur from the figure and the silhouette of Bigfoot as seen in the installation.

The Fabric Workshop and Museum is the only museum of its kind, offering internationally renowned artists the resources to create new work in experimental materials. Artists come from all media-including sculpture, installation, video, painting, ceramics, and architecture-and use FWM’s facilities and technical expertise to create works of art that they could not create on their own. Research, construction, and fabrication occur on-site in studios that are open to the public, providing visitors with the opportunity to see works of art from conception to completion. FWM’s permanent collections include not only complete works of art, but also material research, samples, prototypes, and photography and video of artists making and speaking about their work. Access to the creative process provides visitors with a point of entry into understanding challenging works of contemporary art. FWM offers an unparalleled experience to the most significant artists of our time, students, and the general public.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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