Gold Trump Statue Stuck in Zanesville

- The 15-foot tall, 2,400-pound statue is made of bronze and covered in gold leaf. It was sculpted by Zanesville artist Alan Cottrill, who has created over 400 life-size or larger figures, including statues of Thomas Edison and various U.S. presidents. - The sculpture, nicknamed "Don Colossus," was commissioned by a group of cryptocurrency entrepreneurs for a reported $300,000 to $360,000 to promote a memecoin called $PATRIOT. - A payment dispute is the reason for the statue's extended stay in Ohio; sculptor Alan Cottrill claims he is still owed approximately $92,000 and will not release the statue until the final payment is made. - The sculptor alleges that the backers began using images of his artwork to market their $PATRIOT cryptocurrency without having the rights to do so for monetary gain, violating his copyright. - The value of the $PATRIOT memecoin, which was launched in November 2024, reportedly plummeted by over 95% after Donald Trump launched his own official cryptocurrency, $TRUMP, just before his inauguration. - The statue's intended destination is the Trump National Doral golf resort in Miami, Florida, where a base has already been installed in anticipation of its arrival. - One of the artistic challenges Cottrill faced was realistically sculpting Trump's "wispy" hair in bronze, requiring him to make it thicker to be castable. The commissioning crypto group also requested that the artist reduce the "turkey neck" for a more flattering depiction. - This is not the first large, golden effigy of the former president to make headlines; a different golden Trump statue, which was made in Mexico, gained viral attention at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2021.