The Streets Alive artwork meticulously created by two local sisters and located in downtown Orillia has been vandalized.
The hippie van located in front of Able Taxi – one of dozens situated through the downtown core this year – has been the target of vandalism several times, says Dale Matiuska, whose wife and sister-in-law created the unique art piece.
“It’s been vandalized a few times. They ripped the door handle right off, poked a hole in the front of the van, and somebody tried to climb on top of it which caved the roof in,” he explained.
“We tried to fix it all up the best that we could and then on Friday night around 10:30 p.m. a gentleman cut the windows open and reefed on the handmade puppets my wife made that were glued and tie strapped down inside the van.”
Able Taxi camera footage caught the whole incident on video which has been provided to the OPP.
Artists Shannon Henry-Matiuska and Tammy Henry-Johnson are trying to pick up the pieces after spending extensive time and finances on the project.
“It’s pretty disheartening and makes me think, all this work for what?” Shannon said. “We are quite upset and frustrated.”
Shannon and her sister have decided not to give up on their Streets Alive project and are working to put it back together.
“My sister and I are going to do what we can. We are going to have to change some things, but we don’t want to make another $200 puppet to have it broken into and stolen again,” she said.
“We are trying to figure out a way to fix it without a repeat offender coming by and stealing it again.”
The artists’ desire to keep fixing their artwork is in part thanks to the support they have been given by their sponsors, Dapper Depot, Towns Jewellers, 125 Breakfast Club, and Mariano Tulipano.
“We had a lot of positive feedback from people coming up from out of town. So, we didn’t want to let down Streets Alive. We feel obligated to keep it nice for those valid reasons.”
This is not the first incidence of vandalism of Streets Alive artwork, laments Leslie Fournier, the founder of the project.
“Vandalism is always frustrating, and we’ve had vandalism with all Streets Alive projects and public art in general,” she said.
Fournier says the only way to deal with the vandalism is to keep putting out artwork.
“The best way we’ve found to deal with vandalism is to move forward and let the art win,” she said.
“We can never have any absolute way to prevent vandalism, but we do what we can to make the art as vandal-proof as we can by the way we secure them to the sidewalk and think out the most secure ways to produce the art,” Fournier explained.
Despite the vandalism, Fournier says most local people and tourists appreciate the work of all the artists involved with the project.
“The response from the community and visitors has been really positive and that kind of enthusiasm has grown because we’ve been able to turn it into a program and keep it going for over a decade now,” she said.
“It’s well-loved and appreciated, and I think that’s the sentiment that we want to hold onto and continue so the community is beautified and feels proud and joyful about the public art that is seen around town.”
Vandalism will never stop the Streets Alive project from enlivening Downtown Orillia streets each summer, she vowed.
“It was something we knew could be a reality from day one; public art can be a target for vandalism. It’s unfortunate but our approach is to be proactive,” Fournier said.
“We are prepared to fix what needs to be fixed, re-paint what needs to be re-painted, and let the public art move forward.”
Orillia OPP Const. Ted Dongelmans says the OPP is investigating the incident.
“It has been reported to police and we do have some investigative leads to follow up on,” he said.
Dongelmans says no charges related to the incident have been laid as of yet.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
