Sculpture needs some surgery after art attack
Just two months after its unveiling, one of the sculptures included in the city’s new public art exhibition was hit by vandals. Tamarack Pond was placed along the Okanagan Lake walkway and consisted of two metal trees rising from a rock. At least it did until July 6, when city workers discovered one of the trees had been snapped off and the other bent just shy of breaking.
“It was very discouraging. I had this sculpture in the Castlegar Sculpture walk for a year and nobody ever touched it,” said Cranbrook artist Paul Reimer, who’s in Penticton this week to repair the damage at his own expense.
He suspects the vandalism was the work of drunken hooligans, who did some other damage in the area the same night.
On the bright side, however, Reimer said he’s been overwhelmed by the response he’s received from people who stopped to chat with him while he was working on the repair.
“I’ve probably had 100 people come tell me today how disappointed they are that it got damaged, how much they love the sculpture,” he said around 11 a.m. Wednesday.
“It’s been kind of encouraging to be here and have the community encouraging me on.”
Reimer had attached each of the trees to the rock below with two steel pins, each about 2 centimetres in diameter and 15 cm deep.
Those have now been replaced with a steel plate — forged on site by the professional blacksmith — that has been bolted to the rock. The trees will then be welded to the plate.
Penticton Mayor Andrew Jakubeit said in an email it’s “sad” that someone damaged Reimer’s piece, “but that shouldn’t detract from future opportunities to add more arts and culture for people to enjoy and interact with.”
He noted all six pieces in the exhibit, which runs through April 2018 and awarded the artists honorariums totalling $19,500, “have been very well received and are something to be proud of.”
The mayor expects to see more such pieces to be unveiled publicly in September during the inaugural Arts Rising festival.