Refurbishing the Tiger Statue at Potter Park Zoo

In 2025, I refurbished the Potter Park Zoo tiger statue and created a fresh design for the welcome center board. I had help from Liz Wandtke in attaching limbs and a majority of the fiberglass work. I also re-interpreted the faded art and repainted the two 16 ft long entry gate signs. This blog is about the tiger statue, but if you are curious about the entry gate signs–here is a blog detailing that work: PPZ Entry Sign Blog

In 2024, Potter Park Zoo had to update their road sign due to many of the carvings showing wear and some falling off the sign. The sign was iconic for the area, and was replaced with a simple sign that is more legible with high contrast letters.

On the Potter Park Zoo blog from their website, Heath Thurman wrote “After sixteen years of standing tall and welcoming millions of visitors, the zoo’s entrance sign is ready for a well-deserved retirement. Originally installed in March of 2008, we will say goodbye to the sign that has greeted guests at Potter Park Zoo for years.”

However, the sign was so beloved that many local peoples of the internet were NOT HAPPY –as they often are. People missed the large elaborate colorful sign that represented the local zoo.

Potter Park Zoo is seriously dedicated to the upkeep of their animals, park and zoological gardens. They want their patrons to be happy too, but a whole new sign of that complexity was not in the cards as it would have been a costly undertaking. The next image is how the sign was left since it had been torn down. The tiger was missing an ear, tail, and foot.

Liz Wandtke used to work with prosthetics and fiberglass, so she was a perfect fit to help. The first thing she did was attach the missing limbs. To re-attached the limbs, she drilled holes in the tiger and the limbs, put a rod in to attach them, and then fill it with an extremely durable resin.

Then the sign shop at Potter Park Zoo built a gigantic metal rolly platform so we could access the rest of the tiger. It was extremely heavy, by the way! We needed multiple people to pick it up.

After re-attaching all the limbs, and filling in gaps with resin, Liz started sanding the whole tiger.

The next step was to add the fiberglass. Unfortunately it was freezing cold out, so Liz had to improvise. The resin dries too slowly if it’s too cold, so Liz put a heater and a plastic bag around it. It worked as well as it could, all things considered!

We added fiberglass twice, and sanded twice. At the beginning of the project it was freezing cold out, and by the end of the project is was melting hot out. Such is the life of a mural artist. My next step was to start painting!

I used a combination of spray paint and brush paint for the tiger. This is usually how I paint my murals. I like the sharp lines I get with brushing and the night shading effect I get with spray paint.