The owners of the boarded-up Coliseum Theater on Main Street this week said they were pursuing criminal charges against a Haines man who attached an unfinished artwork to the building March 19.
Haines Borough Police Chief Bill Musser on Tuesday confirmed that his department is “conducting an active investigation into the complaint.”
Artist Rhys Williams wasn’t hard to apprehend. Learning that police were investigating the matter, he stopped by the police station Wednesday morning and wrote a statement detailing his actions. “I said, ‘I’m Rhys Williams and I’m here to turn myself in,’” Williams said in a newspaper interview at press time.
Williams also spoke to newspaper and radio reporters last Thursday, moments after using a screw gun to hang three painted plywood panels on the front of the building at mid-afternoon.
Ken Gross, vice-president and general manager of Gross Alaska, Inc., said he was “absolutely” interested in having Williams charged.
The building has been boarded up for about five years. It’s been in Gross’s family since 1930.
“You cannot vandalize anyone’s property or put a fixed thing on their property without their permission. That’s illegal. That’s the biggest thing right now,” Gross said. “In my mind it’s like taking plywood and spray paint and painting on top of a rusty car parked on Main Street. That’s just wrong.”
Gross said he wasn’t sure what punishment Williams should face, but said he’d like to see a public apology from Williams printed in the newspaper and broadcast on the radio.
A retired college art professor who moved here from Southern California in February 2014, Williams this week explained why he hung the painted panels.
“It was a gross, blank space that I saw available. I didn’t like the fact of the black spray paint on there. It was kind of an eyesore across the street from Art on Main Street and the art gallery,” Williams said in this week’s interview.
On Wednesday, he wrote an apology letter to the Gross family he submitted to the CVN as a letter to the editor. He said he phoned Gross Alaska Inc. Wednesday to speak to family members who head the company but only reached a receptionist.
Williams said he din’t intend to do anything criminal or malicious and felt badly for any embarrasment he brought to a Fort Seward sculpture garden he’s serving as project manager.
Gross said the building is for sale. He said his family tried hard to operate a business here and pays its taxes and bills. The family also allows the Haines Borough to place exhibits in the building’s windows during summer months, when plywood is removed from its windows fronting Main Street. “We’re really trying to do our part,” Gross said.
Williams said hanging the art was “in the spirit of guerilla art. “I was hoping it would have an impact like the beginning of a piece of music that starts with a (cymbal crash). I was hoping it would leave a ripple. But I put it up so it could be taken down again.”
Williams is a glass-blower who had a gallery in Claremont, Calif. As a professor, he assigned guerilla art to his students, he said.
A friend of Williams removed the panel Monday morning.after learning that police were pursuing the case. Williams said he had been out of town visiting a grandchild until midweek.
Dave Canipe at King’s Store said he could sympathize with the Gross family. He wouldn’t want anyone putting things on his building without permission, he said.
“The real issue comes down to the borough not having proper code and you get boarded-up buildings on Main Street. If that’s not against the law, it should be,” Canipe said.
Canipe has followed the issue from Florida via Facebook and said in the Lower 48 he’s seeing boarded-up buildings without art.
“That’s what you get when you live in an artsy community. Art just shows up. It just kind of springs up from the ground,” Canipe said.