{"id":265751,"date":"2026-05-10T15:16:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T15:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/265751\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T15:16:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T15:16:14","slug":"sculptor-behind-gold-leafed-trump-statue-this-was-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/265751\/","title":{"rendered":"Sculptor Behind Gold-Leafed Trump Statue: ‘This Was Chaos’"},"content":{"rendered":"

A towering, gold-leaf statue of President Donald Trump was unveiled with great fanfare<\/a> on Wednesday at Trump National Doral golf course, in a dedication ceremony that included a prayer from a MAGA-aligned pastor who put the president on speakerphone. But the artist behind it had choice words when asked about the two-year creation process.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was a clusterfuck,\u201d Ohio-based sculptor Alan Cottrill<\/a> tells New Times.<\/p>\n

From his foundry in Zanesville (about an hour east of Columbus), Cottrill has worked on hundreds of commissioned statues now standing across the country<\/a>, including multiple at the Ohio State University. But never has a commission been as chaotic as the crypto bro-funded, gold-leafed, looksmaxxed Trump unveiled this week at Trump\u2019s golf club, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI usually deal with people that have everything organized. From the start, this was chaos,\u201d Cottrill says.\u00a0\u201cI have 400 life-size or larger statues around the country. The patron sets a date when they want it installed, and I have it installed on that date. And almost never, anytime whatsoever, does anyone miss a payment, because I always do what I say I\u2019ll do, and the\u00a0patron always does what they say they\u2019re going to.\u201d<\/p>\n

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That wasn\u2019t the case with the 15-foot (22 feet when you include the platform) Trump statue. Demands to nix the turkey neck and make the model skinnier, missed payments, and calls to install the statue last-minute \u2014 no Cottrill commission has been as complicated as the statue dubbed \u201cDon Colossus.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"photoThe statue in question, seen near the ninth tee during the first round of the Cadillac Championship 2026 at Trump National Doral Miami on April 30 in Doral.<\/p>\n

Tech bros Ashley Sansalone (a cryptocurrency developer based in Canada) and Dustin Stockton (a Republican strategist) teamed up with a group of other crypto bros to pay Cottrill $500,000 for the creation of a Trump statue based on the fist pump he gave after the July 2024 assassination attempt in Pennsylvania. If Stockon\u2019s name sounds familiar, it\u2019s because authorities raided his property in connection with allegations that he was involved in defrauding donors of former Trump advisor Steve Bannon\u2019s effort to crowdfund the southern border wall in Trump\u2019s first term.<\/p>\n

Sansalone and Stockton didn\u2019t respond to New Times\u2018 requests for comment. But Stockton told<\/a> the U.K paper The Times that the group did not agree with the sculptor\u2019s description of what happened. <\/p>\n

Cottrill, an Army veteran and founder of an international pizza chain, was in his late 30s when he touched clay for the first time and declared, \u201cThis is the mistress I\u2019ve traveled the world in search of,\u201d as he puts it in his website bio.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I tell people it\u2019s kinda like the first time I kissed a girl. The minute I did that, man, that\u2019s all I wanted to do,\u201d Cottrill tells New Times.<\/p>\n

From there, Cottrill built a business that\u2019s attracted more than 500 commissions, with most standing in public places throughout the nation. In 2024, he got the call about making a giant Trump statue. The group of cryptocurrency acolytes, Stockton told The Times, was to highlight\u00a0\u201cone of the most iconic moments and to show our appreciation of his embrace of crypto.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the group was in agreement: \u201cIf we are going to do this, we had to make it Trumpian.\u201d Also, it had to look like gold. <\/p>\n

When asked by New Times about his political leanings and whether he was excited by the commission request, Cottrill says, \u201cNo comment.\u201d <\/p>\n

The process of molding skinny Trump began with a life-sized clay model that wasn\u2019t quite to the liking of Cottrill\u2019s patrons, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had him even skinnier than he is, a little bit. I knew they\u2019d want that,\u201d Cottrill said about the first model. \u201cThey said, \u2018Oh, he\u2019s too big.\u2019 I\u2019m close enough to his age, and I got some turkey neck going on, and I knew what that was. That\u2019s what happens when you\u2019re almost 80.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Perhaps the only photo you\u2019ll ever see of Trump fist-pumping in front of a pride flag. Photo from Alan Cottrill<\/p>\n

Cottrill says it actually only took him four-and-a-half months to make the 50 pieces he\u2019d put together to make the giant Trump. It took another year and a half, however, for the installation at Trump National Doral to happen because it took weeks for Sansalone and Stockton to make their final $90,000 payment.<\/p>\n

The tech bros in 2024 paid an initial $300,000 for the initial statue, then paid another $60,000 a year later for the gold-leaf plating, and another $150,000 to use imagery of the statue to promote a crypto token, Cottrill said. But getting the payment was easier said than done.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018You were supposed to make these payments nearly a year ago. I can\u2019t trust you to do that,’\u201d Cottrill recalls telling his patrons. \u201cSo I held the statue<\/a>. I put it in an undisclosed location and said it won\u2019t be delivered until the final payments have been made.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike I told the crypto guys from the beginning, I said, \u2018Hey, I don\u2019t fuck around, so you don\u2019t fuck around with me.\u2019 And, like my daughter said, \u2018They fucked around and found out.’\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

After months of holding the statue hostage, the final payment finally came on April 22 with a phone call saying Cottrill had to have the statue installed the next day, ahead of the 2026 Cadillac Championship that ran April 30 to May 3.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I got in a truck with my foundry manager and we drove straight down and when we got to dropoff, we were told that we need this installed and all the gold leaf touched up by dawn tomorrow,\u201d Cottrill said. \u201cWe usually would take three days to do all that, so we worked through the night till 4 a.m., and we finally finished. Then we slept two or three hours, got in the truck, and drove 18 hours straight back to Zanesville.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cottrill high-tailed it out of South Florida because he wasn\u2019t actually invited to the unveiling and dedication ceremony that followed (another first for the sculptor).<\/p>\n

When asked if Cottrill would ever work with the crypto bros or Trump\u2019s team again, specifically for the upcoming Trump Presidential Tower in Miami, which, according to renderings, will include a large, gold-leaf Trump statue, he didn\u2019t need to hear the full question before responding, \u201cFuck no.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce somebody has shown that they can\u2019t be trusted to do what they say,\u201d he adds, \u201cyou don\u2019t work with them anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump himself appeared to be pleased, writing<\/a> on his platform Truth Social, \u201cThe Real Deal \u2013 GOLD \u2013 At Doral in Miami. Put there by great American Patriots!!! President DJT\u201d However, the sculptor tells New Times, \u201cdon\u2019t forget it\u2019s just a normal bronze statue with a coating of gold leaf over the entire thing.\u201d <\/p>\n

A lot of gold leaf: \u201cThere were over 3000 3in.\u00b2 leaves of 23.75 carat gold attached to the surface to cover the entire 15 foot statue,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A towering, gold-leaf statue of President Donald Trump was unveiled with great fanfare on Wednesday at Trump National…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[323,2811,2161,225,227,226,2908,99],"class_list":["post-265751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hialeah","tag-celebrities","tag-election","tag-government","tag-hialeah","tag-hialeah-headlines","tag-hialeah-news","tag-national-spotlight","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}