The Globe Gila monster has its tail again after some 25 years, thanks to the I Art Globe public art initiative and a recent arrival in town.

Created from cement and local rock by Works Progress Administration (WPA) workers in the mid-1930s, this Gila monster suns itself high on a wall along Globe's Stairizona Trail. “It's interesting that it was allowed to remain, since they had another whole federal division that were related to art,” said Thea Wilshire of I Art Globe. “So the federal government actually made all the WPA art creations get taken  away when they finished the projects because it didn't fall under the arts division. We have an extremely unique piece in that it remained.”

Wilshire said the historic art piece, a spotlight feature of the Trail, lost its tail and rear legs about 25 years – broken off by children throwing rocks, neighbors told her. Now it is whole again.

Setting out to restore the monster, based on a photo taken before it was damaged, I Art Globe found the right person in a recent Globe-Miami arrival, artist Brandon Crowson.

“We've been working for three and a half years to find somebody who could repair that,” said Wilshire. “It's a skill, restoration masonry, which not a lot of people know how to do. I was referred to him. . . He showed me some pictures of him 24 stories up in Minnesota, repairing gargoyles on this historic building – and I thought, 'Yes, he has the skills.'”

Crowson and his family moved here from Minnesota two years ago and he already had one project under his belt – restoring Miami's historic YMCA building – when Wilshire reached out to him about the Gila monster.

“I didn't know anything about this when I started, but I did learn almost everything there was to know from a neighbor,” he said. The neighbor, he said, told him the piece was originally painted orange and black. Crowson added that during the two-week project, he could still see bits of that paint. He also discovered that marbles had been used for the Gila monster's eyes.

“I had to correct some of the damage that was there before, like re-bend the metal,then sand and paint it so it wouldn't rust,” Crowson said. He then created the new tail and legs, adding local stones to match the original style.

“Like any artist, I don't really like my own work,” he said with a laugh. “I never really look at it and am satisfied; that's very rare. But I think this was really cool. I'm surprised there weren't more of them or any other kind of statues.”

The restoration work, Wilshire said, was funded through a grant for art along the Trail. “He did a great job,” she said. “Now it's not only restored but it's repaired, so it should last another 100 years, hopefully.”