What's the backstory on the Trump statue at PGA Tour event? It involves a payment dispute

The bill for a 15-foot-tall statue of Donald Trump is paid in full, and the Ohio-based artist trucked it to Miami and installed it at a Trump golf course.

Zanesville-based sculptor Alan Cottrill had been in an ongoing payment dispute with $PATRIOT, a cryptocurrency group that commissioned the work in August 2024. The statue features Trump pumping his fist in the air following a July 2024 assassination attempt in western Pennsylvania.

Cottrill had been paid $300,000 for the bronze and another $60,000 for gold leafing. The hangup was over copyright infringement after the crypto group used the likeness of the artwork to sell crypto tokens, Cottrill said.

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Cottrill held the statue in an undisclosed location in Muskingum County, refusing to let it go until he received full payment. An agreement was reached last week, he said.

Cottrill wrapped the artwork like a mummy, strapped it to a flatbed trailer and drove it to the Trump National Doral Golf Club in Miami. He installed it on a custom-designed pedestal. During Tuesday's pre-tournament festivities, the statue was the talk of the driving range on Tuesday at the PGA Tour’s Cadillac Championship.

"Now fully installed, the sculpture is prominently positioned overlooking the resort's golf courses, where its gold-leaf surface interacts dynamically with the South Florida light," the artist said in a press release.

After a business career, Cottrill, now 73, started studying and working as a sculptor at age 38. He returned to Zanesville at age 50 and founded Coopermill Bronzeworks.