WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Extreme Theft Victim Shares His Story

Extreme Theft Victim Shares His Story

Johnson, Vermont - June 25, 2008

If Joel Fisher's sculptures could talk, oh, the stories they'd tell. The artist sighs, "I'm annoyed at the ugliness of the whole process [I've endured.]"

Fisher was traveling last year when he learned his remote art studio and home in North Troy had been repeatedly ransacked. Thieves targeted dozens of bronze sculptures, not for their artistic value, but for the price of the metal used to make them.

This artist who's exhibited work at the Museum of Modern Art and at the White House suspects the culprits wanted to scrap his work, estimated to be worth more than a million dollars, for pennies on the dollar and use the money to buy drugs.

Bronze is made from copper and tin. With metal trading at high prices, copper thefts have been on the rise from utilities and private homes. Joel Fisher explains, "I've learned most of the copper being stolen around the country goes to China and we import it back as air conditioners or car parts."

Thirty of his pieces almost met that fate. They're now on view at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, after they were recovered from scrap yards in Vermont and Massachusetts, seriously damaged. The sculptor says, "There's evidence some pieces have been dragged upside-down. There are bits of colored paint from the trucks they've been in."

And he's got scars from this experience, too. Fisher sighs, "I've never been in that kind of slump before."

Fisher says he battled depression and has even given up big sculptures for painting. He remembers, "It hit me. I don't have time to start over. This took me 25 years. To start over, I don't have 25 years left."

More than six months after the crimes, he's still wondering if he'll ever find the 29 sculptures that are still missing. Some weigh hundreds of pounds. Have they already been melted down? Are they hidden in woods or a barn in the Northeast Kingdom or elsewhere? Even though police have made several arrests, they haven't been able to answer those questions yet.

Fisher hopes his work is so distinctive that scrap yard staff would recognize it as art and not sell it or smelt it. For now, he's taking solace in the fact his neighbors and friends in North Troy and in Vermont's tight-knit arts community have been so kind and supportive. He smiles, saying, "A kind word means so much."

Joel Fisher is just grateful this crime didn't entirely destroy what he spent so long creating.

The exhibit of Joel Fisher's work will be on view through July 23rd at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson.

Jack Thurston - WCAX News