RHINELANDER (WJFW) \u2014 Rhinelander is home to many Hodags and, as of Friday, it\u2019s home to one more: The Iron Hodag.<\/p>\n
The nonprofit ArtStart and the Rhinelander Chamber of Commerce welcomed the Iron Hodag sculpture Friday to its new home in the pocket park on Brown Street.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The new sculpture is made\u00a0from scrap metal and artifacts collected and donated by the Rhinelander community.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can find plane parts and street\u00a0signs and Rhinelander beer cans,\u201d said Melinda Childs, community and cultural development director for ArtStart. \u201cAnd all sorts of other surprises and all of them have a story.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sculpture was commissioned by Ron Gaber, a former Rhinelander resident who wanted\u00a0to show his appreciation for the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou talk Rhinelander, you talk Hodag,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd it brings people\u00a0together in all types of circumstances. It\u2019s sort of the glue of the culture of Rhinelander, so it\u2019s nice to contribute to that.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was his own\u00a0cousin, Don Gaber, that he commissioned to create the sculpture. But oddly enough, they had never met before this project.<\/p>\n
\u201cI met him online, doing a video chat and that kind of thing for this project,\u201d Don explained. \u201cAnd in-person yesterday was just the icing on the cake. It\u2019s kind of nice meeting family that you\u2019ve never really met before.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ron was impressed by his new cousin.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a Gaber,\u201d Ron said. \u201cHe works hard, he\u2019s creative and he contributes to the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ron\u2019s wife, Elsie Gaber, said that their meeting was almost like they had known each other forever.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was\u00a0like two buddies getting together for a reunion,\u201d she said. \u201cI mean you would never have believed they hadn\u2019t met before.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although they\u2019re going their separate ways for now, Don and Ron have an excuse to get together and admire their handy work.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen\u00a0you see in person,\u201d Ron said. \u201cIt\u2019s ten times great than what I saw online.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Don added: \u201cI\u2019m really happy that Ron\u2019s happy with it. That\u2019s the main thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is also a scavenger hunt associated with the sculpture, asking people to identify all of the historic parts and interactive objects hidden within it. Copies of the scavenger hunt are available at ArtStart and the Rhinelander Chamber of Commerce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RHINELANDER (WJFW) \u2014 Rhinelander is home to many Hodags and, as of Friday, it\u2019s home to one more:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60,342,43],"class_list":["post-544849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-local","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}