[MSN] Canada. Case of the stolen sculpture. The artist from Markhamville in rural Kings County last saw the piece Oct. 9 when he took it and 17 or 18 other works to a trucking terminal in Sussex for shipment to a solo exhibition in Virginia.

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Case of the stolen sculpture
Art heist: Peter Powning's $6,000 Crusty Bone Basin has disappeared

Peter Powning hopes that whoever has it now is enjoying the clay and cast bronze sculpture he created and called Crusty Bone Basin.

The artist from Markhamville in rural Kings County last saw the piece Oct. 9 when he took it and 17 or 18 other works to a trucking terminal in Sussex for shipment to a solo exhibition in Virginia.

The other pieces arrived safe and sound at Habatat Galleries in Tysons Corner, Va., in time for the Nov. 10 opening of the exhibition.

"I've been shipping stuff across North America since 1972, and I've never had a piece disappear from a shipment," Powning said.

He cannot say for certain what happened to it - lost? stolen? put on the wrong truck? - but he has his suspicions. "I kind of hate to say 'stolen' but that's what happened," he said.

Due to a customs mix-up at St. Stephen, the shipment spent an extra week at a warehouse in Saint John before it crossed the border into Calais, Me.

The crated art sat stacked about five feet high on two shipping pallets in the warehouse, with Crusty Bone Basin on top.

The crate had a picture on the outside to help identify which piece the crate contained. Powning said he had stopped this practice some time before, but this crate still had the picture from when he shipped it to Halifax in 2006.

"The shipment arrived and it was totally undamaged," he said, except for one missing piece. "I think somebody liked it."

The artist might feel flattered, but Powning estimates that Crusty Bone Basin would fetch $6,000.

Besides the money, he said that after putting all that work into it, an artist likes to know where a piece ends up.

"I'm not talking about the money value... I like to know who gets pieces," he said. "I think artists kind of have an emotional connection with their work that goes beyond the transaction."

"I probably worked on this for three or four months," Powning said, not full time, but off and on between other pieces. He described making wax patterns of all those bones, then casting them in bronze, as particularly painstaking. "It was just like being a dentist."

He feels that drawing public attention to the missing art, and publishing the picture, will at least make it difficult for anyone to show Crusty Bone Basin to friends.

"Somebody might be displaying it on their mantel-piece," he said.

"It's kind of fun imagining somebody giving it to somebody as a gift and seeing it in the paper, especially if it is a guy courting an honest girl."

Powning signed Crusty Bone Vessel on the bottom.

"I self-insure with these things because nobody will insure art work," he said.

He did not get far with the brokers and trucking companies. "It's funny, when something like this happens, nobody wants to know anything."

Further, he never reported the loss to the police. "I didn't try the police route - I just imagined if I told them something disappeared between Sussex and Virginia."

Two New Brunswick police officers said in interviews this week that Powning should, in fact, report the loss.

"He should have called the RCMP in Sussex and started there," said Saint John Police Sgt. Pat Bonner, because Sussex is where Powning left his work for shipment.

"If it's not on file, where do we find it? What if it turns up some way?" he asked.

Sgt. Derek Strong, RCMP 'J' Division media relations officer, agrees.

"Every victim of crime should call the police," he said from Fredericton. "If we don't know about it, it didn't happen."

He said that a single report of lost or stolen property, added to 20 similar cases, might provide the missing piece to solve a puzzle.

Further, the RCMP enters lost and stolen items into a Canada-wide computer system. Police often find suspicious items during routine traffic stops, for example, but if the database does not list it, the officers must return it to the person who had it.

Finally, he said, "They become twice a victim of crime... they become a victim of the system because they feel we have failed them," Strong said. "There's a 100 per cent chance of failure if it isn't reported to us."

Powning said he delivered the crated art to the trucking terminal in Sussex on Oct. 9. He said he has used this company for years with no problem. The shipment went to Moncton and then Saint John Oct. 12, then to St. Stephen Oct. 13.

The trucking company in St. Stephen refused to accept it saying it did not know the destination. The shipment likely did not leave the truck in St. Stephen before it returned to the warehouse in Saint John.

Powning said nobody called him about this problem. He did not find out until about Oct. 20 when he called Habatat Galleries to see if the stuff arrived - which it had not.

He dealt with the paperwork problem, and the shipment left again for St. Stephen on Oct. 21 for transfer to a broker in Calais - and on to Tyson's Corner, Va.

The gallery called to say the shipment had arrived, but appeared to be one piece short. "I said, 'Well, it was shipped,'" Powning said.

He felt, or hoped, that gallery staff made a mistake counting the boxes, or something like that.

However, he Crusty Bone Basin was AWOL when he arrived in Virginia in November.

"I went for the opening and the piece wasn't there... I've been shipping stuff forever and I never had a piece not arrive," Powning said.

Among other things he has learned from this experience, he said that in the future he will number crates and insist that they be counted at each stop.

The exhibition minus one piece wrapped up in Virginia this week. Somebody out there still has Crusty Bone Basin.

"The only way I'm going to get this back is if someone has a change of heart," its creator said. He will pay $100 for information leading to its return.

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com