http://www.postgazette.com/pg/07081/771527-55.stm
"Family to part with Big Jim sculpture near Charleroi
Thursday, March 22, 2007
By Michael A. Fuoco, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Melissa Farris and Michelle Capozzi are nostalgic about having to part with a large piece of their past, a memory of their father and grandfather, both deceased.
Michelle Capozzi, with her children, Vienna, 7, and Vito, 10, up on “Big Jim,” a 20-foot-tall steel statue her grandfather, James C. Krutz Sr., built in 1978, modeled after his son. The statue is up for sale on the Internet.
Click photo for larger image.
Still, there’s just no getting around one inescapable fact – neither has anywhere to put a 3.5-ton, 20-foot tall hand-welded steel sculpture of a cowboy they know as “Big Jim.”
“I don’t think my homeowners association would look too kindly on that,” Ms. Farris, 35, said with a laugh while thinking about placing the massive sculpture at her residence in Middletown, Bucks County.
Created by the sisters’ grandfather and modeled after their father, the cowboy for nearly 30 years has been a roadside attraction in Speers, outside of Charleroi.
“The family was very conflicted about selling it,” explained Ms. Capozzi, 40, of Rostraver, “but what do you do with it?”
They have to do something because last week the family sold the parcel on Twilight Hollow Road where the sculpture stands ready for a gunfight. Behind “Big Jim” is a building that once housed Krutz Welding, which had been operated by the statue’s creator, their grandfather James C. Krutz Sr. When he retired, he passed the business on to his son, James Jr., the statue’s model and the sisters’ father. The business was closed seven years ago upon his death.
The excavation company that bought the property for some reason doesn’t want “Big Jim,” so the sisters yesterday posted it for sale on eBay, with a starting bid of $8,000 and a “buy it now” price of $20,000.
“One-of-a-kind, larger-than-life cowboy sculpture – never before available! Will not become available again!” the eBay posting trumpets. It also notes that the buyer will need a crane and a flatbed truck to remove “Big Jim” from his concrete base.
“My hope is that someone who really, really appreciates it will buy it,” Ms. Capozzi said. “It’s definitely a work of art and needs to be admired. There won’t be another one, that’s for sure.”
Upon his retirement, the elder Mr. Krutz created “Big Jim” because he was passionate about the Old West – he loved reading books by Louis L’Amour – even though he had never been farther west than St. Louis.
With an artisan’s attention to detail, it took him more than a year to craft the piece, which shows the cowboy with a cocked, long-barreled six-shooter in his right hand and a flintlock muzzle-loader along his left side.
His neckerchief is made of a yard-wide swath of steel, hand-formed to resemble folds of cloth and hand-cut fringe borders on his buckskin jacket and on his wide-brimmed 10-gallon hat with its turned up edges. Metal “rawhide” fastens the jacket in place of buttons.
The sculpture was put into place with a crane in 1978 amid much fanfare and publicity and it immediately turned into a head-turning landmark.
“Ever since the first day it went up, it has attracted attention,” Ms. Farris said.
And not just locally. Shortly after the sculpture was erected and The Associated Press carried a story about it, a Dallas Cowboys fan offered the artist $25,000 for “Big Jim.” Mr. Krutz turned him down, saying he didn’t want to part with his creation.
But now, his progeny are hoping that fan, or any fan of cowboys for that matter, will come forward and provide a home where “Big Jim” can place his 31-inch-long boots, even if it’s not a home where the deer and the antelope play."
