José Sánchez, the man from Maipú who adorns the streets of the municipality with his sculptures » La Voz de Maipú

Jose Luis Sanchez (59) is a lifelong Maipucino, who works as a receptionist and while you may not know him, it is likely that you have come across some of his work, since he is dedicated to making sculptures of different characters and gives them away to the community .

Although José worked with clay when he was younger, it’s not like his life was marked by craftsmanship above all. According to his account, he devoted much of his life to work as a guard. Later, when he was head of operations in a company, the stress caused him health problems, which is why he decided to go back to guard duty.

It was during this process that he came across some shipyards in Maipú, from which he decided to collect and put together pieces of waste or garbage to make scale boats. All this in the year 2010, approximately.

But the decision to make the characters big came later, as one day his son wanted to go to an exhibition of Star Wars it was done in Las Condes, but José didn’t have enough money to go there.

“As a result I said: I will do things, but in a way that everyone can see, they don’t have to pay, because in the end the children get frustrated and the parents too. That’s why I decided to make these great apes and put them on the road,” says José.

So it was. He got to work and created various pieces, such as life-sized figures of Charizard, Sudowoodo, Gengar, Minions, Bastion, etc. Most of them are given away, although always on one condition.

“Gifts need only be displayed and seen by children without making them pay,” said the man from Maipucino, adding that he gives them to whoever wants them, as long as they meet the requirements and show interest.

But all is not rosy, he says. Many times he has had bad experiences leaving work on the street, where they are moved, cars have crashed them, destroyed them, taking off their arms, heads and even stabbing them.

As noted, José gives away most of his work, but also sells some, mainly to pay for the paints and glue, as the other materials are reused. Also, he comments that the biggest motivation for selling them is that he doesn’t have space in his house to store them.

The artist also commented that this work served as therapy. “I get distracted a lot, I get excited and this calms me down a lot. I’ve changed a lot from before doing these jobs until now, other than that people like it,” she confessed.

One of the thoughts behind these works is that José Sánchez believes that children should be offered life-size things, because they are used to seeing their toys as 10 or 15 centimetres.

In fact, he said that once they asked him to make a moai to scale, but that he decided to make it 18 meters because “if a child sees the 18-meter moai, he will realize how much it must have cost these guys to do it.” in stone,” he insisted.

He also commented on his plans to make a great white shark almost seven meters tall, to be displayed at a height where a blind child, for example, could touch it to see what it looks like, stressing how important it is that children can touch it know. “One day a blind boy was touching a Gengar on the street to find out what he was like,” she added.

José takes an average of two to three months to make each of these “monkeys” and has gone so far as to sell them for up to $200,000 pesos, but he also insists that he sell them to people who will exhibit them for free, in their shops, for example.

The Maipus man recalled a few anecdotes he remembers fondly, such as when a small child rushed in to kick the giant Gundam because it “was ugly,” or the times old people took pictures with the figures, he concluded. recounting the day some Norwegian tourists gathered all the Pokémon together to take a picture.

Finally, José Sánchez spoke about his dream: that a huge space be available to fill with his “monkeys” and reused plastic trees, where all the charity events that people organize to pay for medical care and tragic situations.

Thus, you may also have ample space to work on your most ambitious projects, such as recreating the Millennium Falcon in 1:1 scale.

If you wonder what this man is like, you won’t be able to find out, at least here, since he insisted that it seemed to him more important that people know about his work than his photos.