WEST RUTLAND, Vt. -
With hands and feet of marble and multiple faces of steel, the artist calls this sculpture Chaos in Motion.
Her mentor, The Carving Studio's Carol Driscoll, said it's a wonderful execution of the idea. "There is just this chaotic motion of living and balancing, the value of being able to pay your rent against all of the other stimuli and requirements for coming up with something that's meaningful for you," Driscoll said.
But what neither the artist, who no longer lives in Vermont, or Driscoll ever expected is the chaotic journey the sculpture would take. Now damaged and darkened from oxidation, the sculpture mysteriously disappeared while on display as part of a six-week exhibition called Sculptfest in West Rutland.
"It's puzzling to me. We have had very little vandalism," Driscoll said.
Markings in the ground show the300 pound sculpture was taken from its spot, dragged 200 feet down a path and then heaved 100 feet into a marble quarry filled with water.
"My first inclination was to put a big question mark, you know, a graphic saying -- why? But I don't know if that would just encourage a dialogue that we don't want to have, you know. So we chose not to do anything," Driscoll said.
Upset, but not ready to give up, Driscoll and her staff reached out to a team of divers for help.
"I was hopeful but not really optimistic, because it could have gone down so far," said the Carving Studio's Chris Mathewson.
But after just 30 minutes, the dive was resurrected. "They came up and everybody heaved until it broke the surface and that was amazing. It came up -- hands coming up," Mathewson said.
"Right now we're just ecstatic and we want to tell everybody the whole story because it has a happy ending," Driscoll said.
Driscoll said the quarry is a popular place and right now there are no leads on who the vandals could be.
