Big Daddy ll

Ceramic, glass, and wire
60 " x 27" x 24"

This is a portrait of Big Daddy Roth.

Rat Fink and Big Daddy Roth's characters were a big influence on me when I was growing up. I loved the exaggeration he made and the wonderful humor he had. I remember getting my first Rat Fink in about 1965.

Roth is best known for his grotesque caricatures — typified by Rat Fink — depicting imaginative, out-sized monstrosities driving representations of the hot rods that he and his contemporaries built. Roth began airbrushing and selling "Weirdo" T-shirts at car shows and in the pages of Car Craft magazine as early as July 1958. By the August 1959 issue of Car Craft "Weirdo shirts" had become a full-blown craze with Roth at the forefront of the movement.