Four indigenous pieces of outdoor art, representing the four elements are missing Thursday night, after a local artist’s truck was stolen overnight in Brampton. “We had all the art panels in the bed of the truck. We went to the hotel at 9 p.m., and the truck was still there. 7 a.m. we woke up and the truck was gone, and the art panels that were in the truck were gone, as well,” said Saugeen First Nation based artist Jeannette Ladd. Ladd and her father were in Brampton preparing the landscaping, and layout at a Brampton park for the installation of her art project, the four large wood panels that took six months to create. “I was in shock. My father and I have put a lot of time and energy into these panels. All the steel to connect them, to make sure that they stay in the ground, was all in the truck already, all ready to go. So, it’s a little bit frustrating, and I’m a little bit saddened and heartbroken about the whole thing,” said Ladd, who lives near Oliphant. Making the theft sting even more, it happened on Truth and Reconciliation Day. “Yesterday was Truth and Reconciliation. And, I know that they probably didn’t know that those panels were in the back of the truck, but, you know, they mean a lot to me. So I’m just hoping that someone finds them, and returns them, and they will go up in their spot, within one of the parks in Brampton,” said Ladd. Ladd, who just unveiled seven paintings at Western’s Thames Hall last week, is on her way home on the Saugeen First Nation tonight, without her family’s 2023 brown Toyota Tundra, and without her art that would take months to try and recreate. “There was going to be the unveiling on October the 17th. They’re going to have to postpone that. I’m going to talk to the city tomorrow, to see what the next steps are, so we’ll see. Hopefully, the people that stole them will dump the panels somewhere. And I’m hoping that, through the media that people may find them somewhere, and then I can get them back,” she said.
