CAMANO ISLAND — Two 40-pound Camano Island snow geese, legendary Shoshone explorer Sacagawea and a genderless human neck are among the latest victims of one of the region’s newest crimes: bronze art theft.
As the price of copper and, in turn, bronze, has skyrocketed in the last few years, so has the lengths thieves will go to get their axes on the metals.
In one of the best-known cases, thieves in London used a crane to steal a famous 2-ton Henry Moore sculpture valued at more than $5 million in late 2005.
In September, thieves hacked two bronze snow geese from a sculpture on display in a Camano Island public sculpture park. More than a week ago, a well-known 5-foot-tall bronze statue of Sacagawea and her baby, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, was taken from Fort Clatsop, Ore. The statue was later found at a scrap metal dealer in Bend, Ore.
Thieves pushed over a cement- mounted sculpture weighing more than 300 pounds before slicing through the bronze and taking “Neck Fragment” from Legion Park in Everett in September 2006.
“It’s gone; it’s just gone,” said Sultan artist Kevin Pettelle, who spent a year working on “Neck Fragment.”
“Unless someone steals my art and melts it down for whatever reason, it’s going to last for forever. It’s an idea — a piece of yourself that will last forever,” Pettelle said. “And now it’s not.”
As with most recent cases of bronze art theft, it remains unsolved. However Pettelle believes the sculpture was probably taken by thieves who sold it to a metal recycling company for a quick profit. Bronze is an alloy containing mostly copper.
The price of copper has quadrupled in the last few years due to the U.S. housing boom, an expanding Asian economy and a series of strikes and landslides, according to Bryan McGannon, spokesman for the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc. in Washington, D.C.
In January 2003, copper sold for 75 cents a pound on the world market. Prices peaked in 2006 at around $4 a pound, and were at $3.23 a pound Friday, McGannon said.
As prices for copper rose, investors who used to trade in silver and gold began investing in copper, raising demand for the metal even higher.
Thieves cashed in on the copper craze by stealing copper wire from construction sites, manhole covers and even bronze grave markers and urns. They take the metal to recycling sites, where it is sold to smelters to be melted down and reused.
“The vast, vast majority of it is people looking for quick cash to buy drugs,” said Detective Steve Haley of the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office.
He deals with a couple of cases of copper theft a week, which is down from the near daily thefts he was seeing a few months ago.
Camano Island sculptor David Maritz fears his stolen snow geese have already been recycled and melted down. After the birds disappeared, his friends scoured local metal recycling businesses, asking about the birds, but they never found them.
The Island County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the theft but has no suspects, said Undersheriff Kelly Mauck.
“It’s amazing to me that these people stoop to this level,” he said.
Maritz discovered the damage while driving by the sculpture park, which is near Terry’s Corner on Camano Island. He noticed that two of the four snow geese he had sculpted landing on bronze reeds were missing.
“It was just like a weird feeling,” he said. “It’s like, ‘What’s going on here?’”
Since the sculpture was not insured and was on loan to the park, Maritz lost thousands of dollars when it was taken. Now he won’t show his work in similar venues unless he is paid up front.
As a result of the theft, security cameras are scheduled to be installed to the protect artwork in the park, which is outside the Camano Island Chamber of Commerce office, said Lawrence Baum, 70, who was chamber president when the sculpture was stolen.
“Hopefully, this will serve as a notice that you have to be careful to secure your artwork if you’re going to put it out in the public space,” he said.
The recent rash of thefts has artists talking.
They theorize about how thieves steal the work — which often weighs hundreds or thousands of pounds — and discuss ways to improve security and protect art, said Randy Hudson, the foundry man, mold-maker and husband of renowned Clinton sculptor Georgia Gerber.
Gerber, who has sculpted dozens of well-known pieces, including the Pike Place Market pig, only does permanent installations. They are generally better secured and cemented to sidewalks or buildings, so theft isn’t a big worry for her, Hudson said.
However, each new theft gets them thinking about security, the value of art and where all the missing sculptures wind up.
“There are large sculptures in Europe worth millions and they may be worth $20,000 or $30,000 in bronze,” Hudson said. “So to think that they would be melted down for that is just such a shame. The only other explanation is that these sculptures are stolen for someone. It’s like a James Bond movie. The idea is there really someone in the world who is actually collecting the world’s greatest art for their own personal enjoyment on their own estate and they can never show it to anybody … They’re almost certainly being sold as scrap metal.”
There are several large bronze sculptures on streets, outside libraries and in parks throughout Snohomish and Island counties. Most are either bolted to cement blocks that are driven into the ground or attached to sidewalks in well-traveled places, said Wendy Becker, economic and cultural development officer for Snohomish County.
The sculptures are secure, but it’s difficult to stop thieves willing to go to such lengths, said Becker, who used to work for the city of Everett and was devastated when Pettelle’s sculpture was stolen.
“We would not have done anything different for that piece,” she said. “It was secure. They sawed it off its base. They damaged the artwork to steal it. If someone’s going to go to all of that to take a piece, there’s really nothing we could have done differently.”
Becker said the thefts won’t deter the county from buying bronze art in the future. And Pettelle says they won’t stop him from sculpting in bronze, his metal of choice for 28 years.
That doesn’t mean they won’t feel a surge of fury each time a new sculpture is stolen.
“It really hacks me off,” Becker said. “They’re not doing it for the love of the artwork. They’re doing it for a few pennies.”
Reporter Scott Pesznecker contributed to this report. Reporter Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292 or kmanry@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
