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Idiots Among Us

Turning a negative into a positive.

I wish it weren’t true, but unfortunately, there are idiots among us, and sometimes those idiots do things that most of us will never understand. When we put art on display for the public to enjoy, unfortunately, we have to accept the fact that not all will appreciate and respect it or the artists who put many hours of their time into creating it. Some may even go as far as doing damage to it. When something like that occurs, our reaction can define the course of our visual art exhibition and the ultimate outcome of the entire event.

Recently a public art project using fiberglass scallop shells, The Plymouth Scallop Roll, in Plymouth, Massachusetts, fell victim to some of these idiots among us, and some of the cities’ most precious landmarks got vandalized with spray paint. The people of Plymouth could have reacted negatively and gave in to these idiots and pulled the artwork from the streets to avoid this kind of thing ever happening again, but they didn’t. They came together, accepted what had happened, and took action to fix the issue by cleaning the graffiti from the fiberglass sculptures and landmarks. By reacting this way, they will no doubt be in a position to make the most of the national media attention they received due to the foolish and ignorant act done by some of the idiots among us.

Now, as amazing as the great people of Plymouth, Massachusetts have proved to be during this despicable act, it is not the whole story, and it is a story that most people outside of Plymouth do not know. We at Icon Poly have had the privilege to work with the Plymouth Chamber of Commerce twice on their fiberglass sculpture public art projects; With many other communities, twice probably would have never happened. Just days into their first public art project, The Lobster Crawl, some of the sculptures, including a stunning and time-consuming mosaic, were vandalized so much that to our knowledge, one of them was never found. How they reacted to that, set their project up to be very successful for the community.

The artists of The Lobster Crawl came together to help the original mosaic artist completely recreate the most damaged of the sculptures in record time, and the community came together to be protectors of the statues for the remainder of the display period. The Plymouth Lobster Crawl went on to be more successful than anybody could have imagined, and it was all to the credit of the great people of Plymouth, MA.

If you like the arts and would like to support people who bring art to their communities, we encourage you to look up The Plymouth Scallop Roll on any of the social media platforms and send the great people in charge a word of encouragement and let them know you support them. They deserve it.

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