PORT ANGELES – A heavy bronze bell, one part of a pair of twin bells, was stolen from the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center’s outdoor gallery off Lauridsen Boulevard Tuesday night.
The bell, cast by Chuck Bonsteel and donated to the arts center by Krystynn and Gary Gordon in 2000, weighs somewhere between 100 and 150 pounds.
The matching bell, on display about a 100 feet away from the missing bell’s post, was untouched.
“I can’t imagine how anyone would be able to do that,” said Barbara Slavik, education director of the arts center.
“It makes me so mad.”
Port Angeles police officer David Arand said he found no vehicle tracks in the outdoor art park, Webster’s Woods.
The park at 1203 E. Lauridsen Blvd. is named for Esther Barrows Webster, who donated the land to the city in 1979 for the creation of an arts center.
Because of the bell’s weight and size – it is about 2½ feet tall and about 1½ feet in diameter – either one really strong person or multiple people stole the bell, Arand said.
It had hung on a rope from a tree about five feet off the ground.
The rope was cleanly cut.
Other art installations in the city park were untouched.
Jake Seniuk, director of the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center, said the park is occasionally vandalized.
“It’s a public space. We don’t want to fence it off,” Seniuk said.
“That’s part of its charm, that it’s accessible.”
The arts center is seeking proposals from artists for 20 new pieces to be shown in the woods starting this summer.
On the ground near the bells are wooden dowels meant for patrons to ring the bells.
“That makes it even more painful,” Seniuk said.
“That so many people were delighted by it.”