Congratulations to the individual, or individuals, who destroyed a work of art at the White Rock waterfront last weekend.
Your destructive act got the attention you were, no doubt, expecting.
Unfortunately, none of it will come to you directly – unless of course you were foolish enough to record yourself committing a crime and then post that recording online.
But, likely, you won’t be standing up to take any credit. Yours is, after all, the kind of courage that shrinks from the spotlight, that operates only under cover of darkness, emboldened by the supposition that no punishment will come to you.
Perhaps you were never educated to appreciate art – ours is a society, after all, that regards education in arts and culture as an eminently expendable frill.
It’s certain that you gave no thought to the artist who poured his heart and soul into that sculpture you so contemptuously smashed. Have you ever poured heart and soul into anything? Probably not. Your latest actions suggest you have neither.
You also gave no thought to the members of the White Rock Events Society who organized the P’Quals Promenade Sculptures Competition who spent some two-and-half years plotting a way to enrich our community simply by bringing such a thing to the waterfront.
You don’t know anything of this – and you don’t care.
But we – the people of White Rock and South Surrey who love to saunter in the sunshine along the promenade – also bear some responsibility. After a summer season replete with artistic events, we may well feel like patting ourselves on the back.
But we are on the verge of blowing it, big time, if we shrug our collective shoulders at this crime. Or if, knowing something, we don’t report it.
We have no right to call ourselves an arts community if we allow this to happen, or shirk our responsibility to the artist who believed his work had found, in White Rock, a safe and sympathetic haven.