Harry Welty didn't wait long after the snow flew last week to unveil his latest creation. The snow sculpture outside his home on the corner of Fourth Street and 21st Avenue East depicts President Donald Trump as Baby New Year - wearing a diaper, 2019 sash and holding a top hat.
At the time of publication, the sculpture's head had been knocked off the body. There was no word from Welty on plans to make repairs.
In 31 years of making a near-annual snow sculpture at the family's prominent corner lot in the Chester Creek neighborhood of Duluth, Welty has now sculpted Trump twice.
Last time, he admitted to mistakenly putting a tiara on candidate Trump's head in 2016, obscuring Trump's famous pelt of hair and making an even more obscure reference to Trump's past involvement in beauty pageants.
This time, for President Trump, Welty made sure to accentuate Trump's trademark hair and tanned coloring.
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"I thought it was necessary in this case to give him a glorious Cheeto-like color with his wonderful golden-dyed hair," Welty said.
The sculpture is evocative of the giant Baby Trump balloon which has made its way to several events internationally since the start of his presidency.
"These are all intended to be pretty obvious statements," Welty said of his sculptures.
Welty, 68, is an occasional public-office holder, perennial candidate and political provocateur who ran as a Republican in the 8th Congressional District primary last year. He was swamped by Rep.-elect Pete Stauber, R-Minn., a vocal Trump supporter. Welty, who operates a blog named LincolnDemocrat, confessed to only the thinnest tether to the modern GOP party.
"I haven't been to a precinct caucus in ages," he said.
Welty has a penchant for turning to presidents in his snow works - having done Mount Rushmore, Bill Clinton playing a saxophone, the Lincoln Memorial, Barack Obama cradling the globe in his hands, and a wheelchair-bound Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The sculptures aren't always political - he did King Kong one year - and gained a lot of attention from drivers and passersby who honk, give thumbs up and pull off the busy artery of 21st Avenue East to stop for photos.
"When I started I used to have flash bulbs popping off through the front windows at night," Welty said.
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Welty's latest Trump sculpture is making the rounds on social media. He said he got one critic who drove around the block twice and wanted to wreck it. None of a handful of Republican sources contacted by the News Tribune responded to comment about the Trump sculpture.
Welty guessed the sculpture had a fleeting life and wouldn't make it to a natural melt.
"I only gave it about 50-50 chance to make it to New Year's Day," he said. "Sometimes it takes a while for people to get mad enough to take matters into their own hands."
