LIANE HANSEN, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Liane Hansen.
In the past several years, there's been a sharp rise in a crime called industrial looting. Thieves rip out aluminum bleachers, copper plumbing and other metal objects and sell them to recyclers for the value of their metal. More recently, thieves have targeted massive bronze sculptures, including those of some world-renowned artists.
Arizona Public Radio's Daniel Kraker has this story.
DANIEL KRAKER: A few weeks ago, sculpture John Waddell took some out of town guests on a tour of a sculpture garden on his ranch south of Sedona. He led them to the back of the rocky Mesa top where a grouping of the figurative bronze nudes for which Waddell is best known was supposed to be standing.
Mr. JOHN WADDELL (Artist): I looked at the place where they were and it was so hard for me to imagine that they weren't there, I thought I was having an illusion of some kind, but the eight over-life-sized figures weighing at least 3,000 pounds, probably more, were gone.
KRAKER: The pieces, called "The Gathering," are worth more than a half million dollars as art. The 86-year-old Waddell suspects the thieves stole them for the value of their copper, probably not more than four or five thousand dollars. But it's not the money that makes him angry.
Mr. WADDELL: Those eight figures represented eight years of work. It's a bite out of one's life. I have molds on all but one of those figures, but whether they'll ever be cast again I don't know. It's an expensive process but it's also a time-consuming process. And at my age, every moment is important and having these works taken is an insult.
KRAKER: Waddell is the latest high-profile sculptor to have his work pilfered. In late 2005, thieves with a crane and flat bed truck stole a massive and iconic Henry Moore sculpture worth as much as $18 million. It was one of about 20 sculptures stolen in England in a six-month span. Then this past December, thieves broke into the New Orleans studio of MacArthur genius fellow John T. Scott and made off with several bronzes.
Beth Kocher is an art historian with The Art Loss Register, an international organization that tracks stolen art. She says a year ago, she heard about a sculpture theft maybe once a month.
Ms. BETH KOCHER (The Art Loss Register): Now it seems almost every week something is reported, whether it be a small public sculpture taken from a park to some of the larger thefts like the most recent one in Arizona.
KRAKER: When John Waddell first started sculpting, copper cost 30 cents a pound. Now it's up near $3. The reason, says Chuck Carr, spokesman for the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, are labor issues at oversees mines, a volatile market, and skyrocketing demand in China and India. He's heard of thieves going to foolish lengths for a spool of copper wire.
Mr. CHUCK CARR (Spokesman, Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries): There have been several cases around the country of people being electrocuted in attempts to steal wire from a live electric site, in a school here in Washington, D.C., and electrical transformers in nearly every state of the country over the last year.
KRAKER: Carr points out that copper retains as much as 90 percent of its value when it's melted down. Bronze is an alloy made of copper and tin, which is why thieves are going after bronze sculptures. In January, a theft outside Toronto lent credence to the theory that sculptures are being stolen by metal and not art thieves.
A two-ton statue of Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko was ripped off its base. The poet's head was later found at a nearby smelter. The thieves initially duped the recycler by telling him the city had taken down the monument. Chuck Carr says it's sometimes tough to tell the difference between stolen and legitimate material.
Mr. CARR: A sculpture maybe chopped into small pieces before it's received in the yard. By the time it reaches us, it doesn't resemble the material that was originally stolen.
KRAKER: Back in Sedona, John Waddell is replacing the cattle guard into his property with a locked gate. He's hoisted the remaining sculptures out of the garden and down next to his house. The scene is surreal, with many of the beautiful figures lying scattered on their backs in the red earth. The last few weeks have Waddell pondering what's next.
Mr. WADDELL: Of course I'm making these works for my contemporaries, but in reality, there's a chance that I may communicate with someone maybe 600 years from now, and that is one of the drives that I have.
KRAKER: Waddell insists he will continue creating sculptures and hopes to see them displayed in public. But now the air of permanence surrounding these ornately crafted thousand-pound bronzes seem a bit more fragile.
For NPR News, I'm Daniel Kraker in Flagstaff.
Copyright © 2007 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.