Attack on artwork
<p>Vandals caused more than $16,000 in damages to original art works earlier this week at The Gallery in Coeur d'Alene.</p>
COEUR d'ALENE - When Rose Robbins saw the damage at The Gallery on Tuesday, it was like a punch right in the gut.
"It's really sickening. Obviously, I am angry. Mostly, I can't imagine someone standing in front of something beautiful and destroying it like that," she said. "I don't understand that at all."
Robbins and husband, Todd Schild, own The Gallery at 100 W. Prairie. Sometime between Saturday night and Tuesday morning, someone broke in. They didn't take anything, including several pieces of jewelry on display. What they did was destroy $16,000 worth of art.
"They just took a big can of orange spray paint and went up and down a few walls," she said. "The toughest part was calling my artists and telling them their art has orange spray paint all over it."
Nine paintings, a wooden stair statue and a wooden post were spray-painted.
One painting by Floyd Sneed was titled,"Jeremiah was aBullfrog." Another by Michael Tolleson was "Cosmic Columbine," and one by James Baumgartner was "Hangin' Five."
One of the paintings was valued at $6,800. Another, $2,000. One, $1,300.
"Some of it is irreplaceable," Robbins said.
According to a Kootenai County Sheriff's Department report, someone entered the business through the rear door that had been secured with a screw in the upper right-hand corner.
An investigation continues.
Robbins said there were other rooms where art and an antique piano were not damaged.
She and her husband opened The Gallery in September as a consignment shop to display and sell sculptures, paintings, and other artwork.
Things were going well, with an art contest under way, until this vandalism.
They have cleaned up the mess as best they can, plan to remain open and recently signed some new artists. They have insurance, so the damage is covered monetarily, but the art can't be duplicated. It is lost forever.
"You can't replace it," Robbins said.
She struggles to understand how someone could enjoy standing in front of another's creation, ruin it, then run away.
"It sucks," she said.