CARLSBORG — Diane Magner and her family are still recovering from a Mother’s Day shock.
“The Skimmer,” a waist-high sculpture of a graceful water bird, disappeared last Sunday from the yard beside Magner’s business, Gabby’s Java, off Carlsborg Road.
“We heard a crash at four o’clock in the morning,” Magner said.
After sunrise, she and her husband Brian went out to see if the front driveway had been damaged.
They didn’t think “The Skimmer” would be gone — it was set in concrete and rebar — but sure enough, its spot was vacant.
The Magners called the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office and gave a report to Deputy Michael Dick.
But a week later, they’re still marveling that someone could rip the bird from its concrete base.
Painful loss
On Friday afternoon, Magner explained that the loss of the sculpture is a painful one, since her mother, Judy Priest of Sequim, had purchased it from its maker, Oliver Strong.
Strong is the sculptor behind the large metal elk at both entrances to Sequim, as well as several other sculptures inside and outside the city.
Priest bought “The Skimmer” from Strong in December 2004, three months before the artist and his wife, Penny, were deported to Britain.
Strong, a British citizen, and Penny, a South African, moved to the United States in 1991 and settled in Sequim in 1994; they had five children, four of whom were born here and therefore are U.S. citizens.
Nearly 10 years after the Strongs had established themselves in Sequim, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement found they had overstayed their visas, and forced them to leave in March 2005.
“Mom bought that sculpture,” Magner said, “to help the family stay together as they left the country.”
Priest tells of sculpture
Priest said she paid $5,000 for “The Skimmer,” though Strong had valued it at $7,500.
“It’s worth more as an art piece than for the metal . . . it has just a thin layer of bronze. Poor Oliver couldn’t afford solid bronze,” she said, adding that Strong and his wife “were the nicest hardworking couple.”
Priest, an accomplished Sequim artist herself, is as floored as Magner about the vanished bird.
“It’s a gorgeous thing,” she said. “They sure jerked it out of the ground.”
Magner, meanwhile, holds out hope that someone will see “The Skimmer” and report its whereabouts to the police.
The sculpture depicts a bird in flight, and is about 3 feet in length from forked tail to pointed bill, Priest said. Its wings are about 3 feet high.
Protecting others
The day after discovering “The Skimmer” gone, the Magners took down another Strong sculpture they had installed in front of Gabby’s: a skate, a stingray-like marine creature that flew near the cafe’s entrance.
And on Thursday, the couple removed the decorative copper coffee cup from Gabby’s exterior wall.
She and Brian stripped their cafe of metal shapes out of worry that they too would be stolen.
Anyone with information leading to the sculpture’s recovery is urged to phone the Clallam County Sheriff’s Department at 360-417-2459.
________
Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladaily news.com.
