Vandals attack Wolfville Uncommon Common Art sites
Late in June vandals hit stop number seven on the Uncommon Common Art (UCA) program and they were back again recently.
Miyoshi Kondo’s work, Harvest Preserves, she says, was attacked three times in total. Now she’s looking at a memorial to what was there.
The work, featuring 24 glass jars, had been reinstalled in the Acadia University woods above the Irving Gardens on June 29. Volunteers joined Kondo to complete the effort. Then the vandal or vandals hit again.
A geocacher reported the latest destruction, which involved stealing the jars. No sign was left in the area of broken glass or the bottles.
Some contents appeared to have been emptied in front of the shelves. The shelves were intact, but uprooted from the ground and leaning against a tree. The sign was taken apart and all of its components were still there.
Estimates are that the vandals struck between July 22 and 25. Earlier the glass jars were smashed.
“It seems very intentional,” says Kondo, who lives near Wolfville. “This time it looks like they took the jars home.”
She imagines the vandal frequents the trails and lives nearby, but can’t understand the damage given that her 2016 installation in front of the Wolfville Memorial
Library was never touched.
This summer’s UCA work at the library was also hit by vandalism. Wood sculptor Veronica Post says someone pushed over the wooden horse.
The head came off and she found gravel embedded in the wood. It was relatively easy to repair and is back on the old railway tracks.
UCA creative director Terry Havlis Drahos says this has been the worst year yet for vandalism to UCA works of art in the 10 years of operation. Some pottery pieces along the Cape Split walking trail were targeted several years ago.
Drahos has been working with the RCMP to try to determine who the vandals are. She thinks the damage to the horse was random, but the destruction of the Harvest Preserves was much more deliberate.
Concerned about the amount of broken glass caused by the vandals in June, “folks from the Irving Gardens and I spent a couple of hours picking up broken glass, but it is impossible to get all of the pieces,” she said.
“Someone went to a lot of effort to destroy this art piece. Sometimes I wonder if it is worthwhile. I expressed this to the police officer who came to investigate. He responded, ‘please keep doing this, people love it.’
Drahos went on to note, “I didn’t really expect this in Wolfville. All the pieces elsewhere are fine.”
Anyone who knows anything about the crime is asked to notify police in Wolfville. This is the 10th year in a row that sites all over Kings County have installations for another season.
The fully juried art show features 20 very different pieces.