What Happened to Wolf Tits?
A 700-pound sculpture installed on a Gowanus sidewalk mysteriously disappeared last week roughly three weeks after it first mysteriously appeared, DNAinfo reports. The female wolf, made of concrete and signed “Wolf Tits,” was on Butler Street near where it dead-ends into the Gowanus Canal, in front of a former ASPCA building. A horse trough out front, installed in 1913 and later filled in with concrete, presumably to discourage littering, served as a makeshift pedestal for the work, whose artist said, “a she-wolf seemed like a fitting subject because mother wolves are protectors of their young, just as the ASPCA is for all animals,” the website reports.
The unknown artist didn’t remove the sculpture, he told DNAinfo. Theories as to what may have happened to it include theft, as street art is sometimes sold on sites like Craigslist (though no listings for the sculpture could be found), or removal by the city, which the artist considers unlikely because the block isn’t well-trod enough to generate complaints, though the DEP is performing restorations across the street. (The agency would not comment.) “It’s fair game,” the artist said. “It’s not sanctioned, so it’s up for the people to decide what to do with it.”
This was the first three-dimensional public Wolf Tits work, though the artist has been known to graffiti pictures of wolves with very visible mammaries around the Gowanus Canal area. “Wolf Tits” as a tag has been spotted in multiple American cities, though it’s unknown if the same person is responsible for them all.
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