VIDEO: Muscle-bound thieves make off with quirky Blockers’ Seaside sculptures
PUBLIC ARTIST Isabella Lockett doesn’t look like an urban warrior in her designer hat and pink suede skirt.
But she’s come to survey the site where her nine sculptures – entitled Blockers’ Seaside – once enhanced Leagrave Marsh.
Six were stolen last year and the council has removed the other three for safekeeping.
In addition the acrostic she created with Luton poet John Hegley and Wauluds Bank Primary School pupils has disappeared. And several of the 16 milestones commissioned by Sustrans for the Marsh Farm Loop have been vandalised or damaged.
Isabella pulls black bin liners over her boots and strides into the marsh. She’s absolutely astonished that the quirky hat blocks have vanished and wants to see for herself what happened.
“They were heavy bronze, on specially constructed anti-theft stainless steel poles set in concrete,” she explains.
“We had to bring in heavy duty equipment to instal them and the memory of standing in the pouring rain while they went in is still viscerally fresh in my mind.”
She’s keeping her fingers crossed the muscle-bound culprits were art lovers: “The scrap metal value is about £50 but the sculptures are worth £4,000 each.”
Isabella is hoping a civic-minded philanthropist will provide the cash for reconstructing the quirky creations from the moulds she still has.
But she’s disappointed the council has neither followed the milestone maintenance plan put together by stonemason James Johnson, nor made any attempt to repair the one that had its top knocked off by a council lorry.
Chelsea Arts College graduate Isabella worked closely with local natural historian Dr Trevor Tween to restore wildlife habitats in the area. Her one consolation is that while her amusing bronzes no longer dance on their plinths among the bullrushes, moor hens and water voles are thriving. “At least the marshland can’t be nicked,” she says.
“There’s so much history in this area. We wanted to revive a sense of the past, of the days when Luton hat trade workers flocked to Leagrave Marsh, known as ‘Blocker’s Seaside.’”
Sustrans funded the 16 milestones and acrostic as part of the Art and the Travelling Landscape programme along route 6 of the National Cycle Network.
East of England Regional Director Nigel Brigham said: “It’s a shame that the art works on the Marsh Farm Loop have gone missing. They’re really important in enhancing people’s experience of walking and cycling the national network.
“They encourage people to get out and explore their local area on foot or by bike and create places that people can visit again and again.”
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Weather for Luton
Friday 25 May 2012
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Temperature: 11 C to 24 C
Wind Speed: 21 mph
Wind direction: East
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Cyber Babe
Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 04:48 PMIt's absolutely diabolical that anyone should nick these super hat statues. They were unique, unusual and uplifting. What sick saddos to remove something that brought so much pleasure and added such appeal to a previously grotty area of Luton. I hope the thieves get their come-uppance -fingers crossed they suffer a lifetime of aching backs to remind them of their mindless stupidity.
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