Gargoyles are an old European tradition of putting ugly statuary on the eaves of buildings to scare away evil spirits. Commonly known from various cathedrals, and epic movies & books such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame with Quasimodo climbing Notre Dame. Often used to disguise waterspouts and to decorate other features of architecture, these beasties are still with us today as primarily decorative images.
Columbus is a city with a history of it's own of course. As with most cities, the citizens have a love of sports which is quite significant. But Columbus has missed out on getting franchises for most major league sports. Ohio has two NFL teams for instance, one in Cleveland, the other in Cincinnati. And those same two cities also monopolize the two MLB teams for Ohio as well. It appears Ohio is doing just fine for major league teams, no?
Columbus has a AAA baseball team, the Columbus Clippers, a farm team for the New York Yankees (personally I prefer the Toledo Mud Hens, the Detroit Tigers' farm team, mostly because I'd gone to a lot of their home games before moving to Columbus). And the city also is home to the only stadium in the US built just for Soccer, the home of the Columbus Crew. Soccer is popular in the outskirts of Columbus, but for various reasons I won't go into, is not a particularly popular sport in the US.
The biggest most popular nationally known team in Columbus is for OSU Football. The Big Ten Conference team is always prominent in the press, and the aggressive bias of locals for Ohio State fans is sometimes overwhelming.
None the less, the only significant and officially Professional Major League team in Columbus is a relatively new addition. Just a few short years ago (first game 10/7/2000), Columbus got a new NHL expansion team, the Columbus Bluejackets. Ice Hockey has a longer tradition in Columbus than the NHL, but the Bluejackets added a whole new world to the sports fans in Columbus. And with this, they have their mascot "Stinger". Here is where I'll be getting back to the artistic quality of Gargoyles in the greater Columbus area by the way.
Okay, now that's what he looks like in his advertising for the team....
So naturally he's appropriate as a Gargoyle, right? (I'm told that properly he is a 'Grotesque', but if you know the difference between a Gargoyle and a Grotesque you probably already know too much and would ignore this anyway). You have to search to find these things sometimes, but the Nationwide Arena district tries hard to put them out where you can see them clearly.
It makes perfect sense by the way that he is in the process of breaking his hockey stick, but the way his knees are angled together might lead one to believe he really needs to go potty just now.
Does this qualify as Art, by the way? um, yes, but was it necessary?