Stolen art on campus

Installation art was stolen from a pine tree outside of the University Reserve building last week. USU Police are investigating the origins of the missing art project.

Meili Stokes, Chelsey Patten and Melody Burton spent three hours draping gray tulle around a tree and securing it in place with fish wire in the cold weather.

“The gray tulle was supposed to symbolize smog that was choking the tree,” said Stokes, a senior studying art and English.

They were halfway done putting up their installation art for a class project when they discovered it went missing overnight.

Now all that’s left are the tell-tale signs that an art project was there in the first place: remnants of tulle and fish wire waving in the wind. Burton, a freshman studying art, said she was frustrated when they discovered the art was missing.

“No, this is the worst,” she said. “When are we going to have time to fix this? What are we going to do next? We need to downsize and we have less material now, how are we going to calculate that in?”

Patten, a senior art major, said there was no way the wind blew away the project.

“We had a sign there with our names on it,” she said. “Things were just taken down. In fact, we had a cinder block that was completely moved.”

Burton said the stolen installation art was “not cool,” especially after they put so much time, money and effort into the project.

“If you are ruining someone else’s art, you are ruining their line of work,” she said.

The group didn’t get an extended deadline on their assignment but they still had to rebuild, so they decided to relocate the project to another, more visible, location. Burton said she felt anxious about finishing the installation art on time and with the few supplies that were left over.

“If we put it back again, will they take it again?” she said, “But by no means are we discouraged. We put up more defense, we figured with it being in a more open location it would deter someone from stealing it.”

Capt. Steve Milne of the USU Police Department said the Chase Fine Arts Center is not an area with a lot of crime. Since the beginning of the school year, there were four reported crimes, two of them were involved with stolen installation art.

“One being the art project that was hanging from the tree and the other being a stolen skateboard,” he said.

Milne confirmed with facilities that they didn’t tamper with the art project. He said thefts are the number one problem here on campus, not that it’s rampant.

“We have seen a drop in last year’s thefts as compared to this year’s thefts,” he said.

Milne said if anyone sees anything suspicious or has information about the stolen installation art, report it to the police as soon as possible.

“It is much easier to report it right away than a day or two later,” he said.

According to Tate.org, “installation art is used to describe mixed-media constructions or assemblages usually designed for a specific place and for a temporary period of time.”

— morgan.pratt.robinson@gmail.com