Cartoon team unveils statue near Cartecay River
There’s a new roadside attraction in Gilmer County you won’t find anywhere else.
A 12-foot statue of a cartoon squid now standing just off Highway 52 East is an official homage to the animated program Squidbillies.
Cast and production crew members from the TV show — a longtime staple of Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block of late night cartoons — gathered at Cartecay River Experience (CRE) last Friday to unveil the giant statue of Early Cuyler, the program’s hot-tempered, foul-mouthed lead character.
Squidbillies has been a Georgia-grown product since premiering in 2005, according to Cartoon Network.
About a family of “Appalachian mud squids” wreaking havoc among humans in fictional Dougal County, the series features references to north Georgia and Ellijay, noted show creators Dave Willis and Jim Fortier, both of whom grew up in Conyers.
“My folks have a place in Blue Ridge, and one of our editors has a place in Blue Ridge. We’ve spent our entire adult lives going to cabins up here,” said Willis.
The statue, which features the head squid wearing one of his ever-present trucker hats that reads “You can’t fix STUPID if it don’t BROKE!!!,” is a memorial to the long-running show that just began its 13th and final season. Willis noted.
“We’re happy to have it here,” said Fortier. “We mention Ellijay on the show. We come up here to hang out and come up here to cabins. We’re fans of the place.”
Built mainly from Styrofoam and wood, the statue was constructed in Atlanta, then trucked in pieces to CRE where it was assembled onsite, noted Russ Vick, one of the Atlanta set piece designers who worked on it.
“We made it down in Avondale at a friend’s studio. We brought in a bunch of 4x4x8-foot blocks of Styrofoam, assembled them together and started going to town carving it with hot wires. We sanded it down real nice and coated it with epoxy,” said Vick, who figures the body weighs about 400 pounds and the hat, alone, around 200.
“They were on the same flatbed trailer, one in front and one in the back. We just followed behind the trailer coming up here, making sure it didn’t fly off,” he added. The three designers worked in between rains to assemble the statue after the pieces arrived here Tuesday.
“(The weather) was a huge challenge, even down where we were building it and were getting into the painting phase,” Vick said.
Sam Carter, another of the squid builders on hand Friday, said he, Vick and team member Chris Brown previously worked on other Georgia-produced shows.
“We do a lot of weird fabrication stuff like this — props and set pieces, that kind of stuff. We’ve had a good time working together on this project,” he added.
This may be the tallest single piece the three have been hired to produce, Carter reckoned.
“We made about 2 or 3 miles worth of tentacles for Stranger Things this past year. They weren’t taller, but longer,” he said.
Easily visible from the highway, the big green squid stands in a grassy lot next to the river outfitter and the adjacent Cartecay River Pizza Company. Passersby are welcome to stop and take photos with it, noted CRE’s Jenny Janssen.
Carter said the in-progress Early drew attention, and selfies, from drivers before it was even fully put together.
“A lot of people just knew what it was and stopped,” he added.
Willis, also a creator of Adult Swim’s popular Aqua Teen Hunger Force toon, said the statue will remain on the premises for “the next five years or eternity, whichever comes first.”
Squidbillies, which airs at midnight and often presents a wild, TV-MA-rated satire of life in the north Georgia mountains, headed into its last season Sunday, Nov 7.
“Cartoons never die, though. It may come back. You never know,” Willis said.