This viral art project is a real Croc.
A mystery artist won’t rest until every NYC sculpture with feet — or paws — is wearing a pair of Crocs.
“I have always wanted to do something creative with Crocs, because I have been a huge fan of them for the longest time,” said the mystery man behind the @kidwithcrocs handle on TikTok and Instagram, whose videos have collected over 10 million views.
The Croc-star would only say he is under 30 years old, from Hoboken, NJ, and he used to edit videos as a freelancer but is currently unemployed.
He has added the Croc creations to 11 Manhattan statues, including the elephant from the “Wild Couch Party and Friends” monument at 28 Liberty St. in the Financial District; five of the animal-themed “Life Underground” sculptures by Tom Otterness found in city subway stations, and the “Balto Statue” of a sled dog located just north of the Tisch Children’s Zoo in Central Park.
“It took me two weeks to make these custom duck Crocs for this duck statue. I don’t know, thought it would be funny,” he says in a March 1 video while placing white shoes onto the webbed feet of the bronze “Ugly Duckling” statue located near East 74th Street in Central Park.
After taking pictures of each statue, he uses online software called Blender to sculpt the shoes around the statue’s feet. Using those dimensions, a 3D printer produces plastic-like molds of the footwear, which he then sands down and paints. Each project runs him around $60 in materials.
But Croc bandits always swoop in, stealing the custom shoes off the sculptures.
“They’re easy to remove and people take [the Crocs] so quickly off the statues,” the artist lamented. That’s why, this week, he spent 30 hours recreating all of the projects he had already done.
“This morning at 6 a.m. I went back to every single statue and put every single Croc back where it belongs,” he said in a video posted Tuesday, which shows him re-printing, re-sanding and and re-painting all the creations, before sliding them back onto the feet of the same monuments.
“The reason I like Crocs is because they started out as kind of like a stick-it-to-the-man piece of fashion — the whole sentiment around them is that they’re ugly, and that’s okay. I think there’s something really beautiful behind that,” he said, adding he owns 20 pairs himself.
Crocs – which are reportedly banned in dozens of US schools over fears the shoes’ slide-on style and foam-like, Croslite material creates a slipping hazard – have been a polarizing, cult footwear brand since their 2002 invention by three friends in Colorado.
On March 6, he put blue, red, green and yellow Crocs on the paws of the largest of the three “Group of Bears” statues, a 1932 bronze sculpture by Paul Manship, in Central Park.
He said the goofy shoes make the statues more accessible.
“The way I see it is, in order to get people to care about art, sometimes you need to make it more accessible. Some people may not know who Paul Manship is, but if I put silly Crocs on the statue, then maybe a couple of people will learn about these prolific, much more serious and capable artists than myself,” he said.
“I think it’s fun that people laugh and enjoy the videos, and I hope people will see them and be inspired to do something creative themselves,” he added.
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