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City's rejected Lovers accepted by Port Alice THE PROVINCE, Saturday, June 10, 1972 |
| The sculpture The Lovers, rejected by the Vancouver parks board, was accepted Friday by officials in Port Alice to stand outside the new community centre.
But at the moment the statue is trapped inside the Stanley Park service yard. It was taken there after being removed from the beach between Sunset and English Bay, where sculptor Gerhard Juchum had placed it as a donation to the city. Now The Lovers is guarded by a civic outside workers picket line around the service yard. Truckers are unlikely to cross the picket line, said Frank Hieronymi, chairman of the Port Alice Recreation Commission. "If we can't get a private carrier to pick it up, the sculpture will have to stay until the strike end," he said. Hieronymi said he knew of Juchum's previous sculpture, the Spear Fisherman, which also had been rejected by the Vancouver park board. It's now residing near Port Hardy harbor. "We held an emergency meeting of the commission and decided to obtain The Lovers," he said. "If we didn't act quickly it would go to Port Hardy too." Hieronomyi said there is keen rivalry between the two Vancouver Island communities. "But we haven't all that much culture up here," he added. Juchum said he has given his work to Port Alice. He said he always gives his work away, or charges only the cost of the material, because "I have to convey some message to the people through my art." The message, he said, is mainly to stress the individual's part in the universe. He makes his living as a civil servant with the federal government. Juchum said he placed The Lovers on the beach because correspondence with the park board had become futile. "The last letters I got from them were quite nasty," he said. |
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