UK: Artist set to craft replacement for stolen waterfront urn

From the Barrie Examiner: Artist set to craft replacement for stolen waterfront urn
Barrie police continue to investigate after urn stolen from display
By LANCE HOLDFORTH
Barrie police are still looking for the culprits responsible for stealing a bronze urn from a lakeside art installation, but the artist who created it, John McEwen, is in the process of crafting a replacement.

The 200-pound urn was removed from McEwen's Babylon sculpture from the southern shore of Kempenfelt Bay on Nov. 18 after someone cut three support bolts and removed the piece.

"I do think it was a matter of new technology (tools)," McEwen said. "There's all kinds of reasons people steal things from vandalism to beer money."

The MacLaren Art Centre brought the sculpture to Barrie in 2003 as part of the Shoreline exhibit on loan from the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, which was to be removed a week after the urn was taken.

"It was stolen for it's scrap value I assume," McEwen said. "The timing of the theft was too bad because had a week gone by, it would have gone back to the McMichael."

Barrie police estimate the urn is valued at $60,000.

The 20-year-old installation has since been relocated to the McMichael in Kleinburg, and after recent approval, 66-year-old McEwen will begin crafting a replacement urn at his Hillsdale studio.

"The interesting thing about putting something in public is it stays there over time and becomes a part of a person's background," he said. "This is a relatively simple process."

McEwen is known to the international art community for his Searchlight, Starlight, Spotlight sculpture outside the Air Canada Centre in Toronto and his sculpture of a bronze canoe in front of the new Canadian embassy in Berlin, Germany.

The McMichael will add the installation to their outdoor exhibit in the spring after it has been fixed, but CEO Victoria Dickenson said even though McEwen is optimistic, she feels bad about the damage.

"With a sculpture, it's meant to be touched and appreciated and most sculptures are respected by the public," she said. "I can't speak for him (McEwen), but it's always disturbing for an artist to have vandalism on a piece of work."

The theft was a destructive display of misfortune, but Dickenson said she wonders how someone managed to steal such a large item.

"This was very deliberate. This wasn't accidental damage," she said.

"Someone would have had to have taken a truck and more than one person."

Director of development for the MacLaren Art Centre, Sue-Ellen Boyes, said vandalism is a downside of publicly displayed art.

"It's something that happens," she said. "It's an unfortunate and unexpected thing to have happened."

Although many Barrie residents enjoyed the installation before the theft, Boyes said she is relieved McEwen will be able to fix the sculpture.

"I think there is a long history of public art projects all over the world (which get vandalized)," she said. "He will be able to re-cast and re-attach a replacement urn to the piece."

Anyone with information is asked to contact police at 705-725-7025, or Crime Stoppers at 1-888-222-8477.