Lye a hit with vandals
Vandals are making a habit of targeting New Plymouth’s
Waving Wands Len Lye sculpture.
Two of the six Waving Wands on the city’s popular Coastal Walkway have recently been snapped after people climbed them.
Terry Parkes, chairman of the Art in Public Places Trust, said it was disappointing that New Plymouth’s Waving Wands were an ongoing vandalism target.
‘‘They’ve been vandalised five times,’’ he said. ‘‘The last one was three weeks ago,’’ he said. The second broken wand was snapped three months ago.
The wands have also been damaged once by extreme weather.
Lye’s work has also taken a beating in the capital recently.
Earlier this month Len Lye’s
Water Whirler sculpture on Wellington’s waterfront snapped while Hunter Macdonald attempted to do gymnastic stunts on the $300,000 art work.
The Wellington man, who said he climbed the whirler because he was bored, was hospitalised after the sculpture hit him on the head when it snapped and sent him tumbling into the water.
Parkes said they were going to be making the wands stronger so that they could not be broken by vandals.
‘‘They were meant to be vandal proof.’’
The first time the kinetic art was vandalised was before the official opening in March 2017, then they were vandalised three times in two months.
Mimicking Len Lye’s iconic Wind Wand, which sways on New Plymouth’s Coastal Walkway, the Waving Wands are monitored 24/7 by security cameras monitored by police.
Parkes said the police will be able to track down the vandal, who they believed was intoxicated at the time, and charge them.
In Wellington McDonald is facing a charge of intentional damage for snapping the Water Whirler and will appear in court on November 9.
‘‘They’re going to make him pay so we are going to do the same,’’ Parkes said.
The New Plymouth artwork, which is made up of five 12 metre wands and one 14 metre wand, cost $150,000 and was funded by the Art in Public Places Trust.
The two damaged wands should be fixed and reinstalled in five to six weeks.