Porter Sculpture Park in Montrose vandalized days before opening

Porter Sculpture Park, listed by TIME Magazine as one of the top 50 American Roadside attractions in 2010, was vandalized Wednesday, May 10. It will now take up to several years to repair the damage, said the creator and operator of the park Wayne Porter.

His sister Audrey Porter said that when she got a call from her brother that Wednesday around noon, she immediately realized that something was wrong as usually it was her who was calling her brother and not the other way around.

“I call him, he doesn’t call me, he might text me about things, but he doesn’t [call],” said Porter.

That Wednesday morning, Porter went to check on his sculpture park, for the annual opening of the new season planned for May 15.

Porter was in the far northwest corner of the 18-acre park west of Sioux Falls when he noticed that someone had apparently visited the place before him this year. His sculpture group of the bull and its four guardians was vandalized.

The guardians, which look like human-sized skeletons with protruding ribs and goat-like faces and horns stationed around the bull, were beheaded, and the heads were gone. The bull’s base was spray-painted with the messages “Satan is defeated,” and “Jesus is King.”

A few other sculptures, including the Irish monks and a sculpture depicting the artist’s brother, have also been vandalized. Porter said that it will take him more than a year’s worth of work to replace the pieces that were stolen if they cannot be recovered.

His sister noted that the worst part of it is that it all came up just before their opening for the new season. It usually takes them a few days and several adults to get the place running at the best circumstances, she said.

“There will be four strong adults working on it under the best of circumstances, and it’s a big job."

Her brother said that in the past there had already been a few instances of vandalism in the park, but they were usually limited to minor issues, including spray-painting, but that did not bother him a lot because he could repaint pieces if needed.

“I don’t care about paint, I will just paint over,” said Porter. “It does happen occasionally.”

His sister said that from time to time they were getting a comment on their social media that referred to the bull sculpture as Moloch. Moloch is a deity mentioned in some religious texts as a deity whose worship was marked by the sacrifice of children by their own parents.

Both Porter and his sister said they never heard the term before. Porter noted that when it first came about, he looked it up, and discovered that the deity had arms and legs, while his sculpture was clearly a bull.

His sister noted that she remembered that some of the visitors would come up to her and mention that they felt Satanic influence associated with the park sculptures, while at the same time they would also get visitors that would come up to her and say that her brother must be the world’s best Christian.

Porter said that while neither of that was true, she could assert that her brother was the kindest human being on the planet. It was the essence of art, Porter noted, to reveal what the spectators already carry around with them.

“Art is whatever people bring with them, and whatever they want to see — they see,” she said.

The sculptor himself said that his bull had a neo-Egyptian art influence about it. Porter, a graduate of South Dakota State University with a degree in political science and history, said he was fascinated with the ancient Egyptian empire.

After graduating from the university, Porter used to run a ship farm. Although not a professionally trained artist, Porter has been making sculptures since he was a child helping in his father’s blacksmith shop.

Both his historical background, as well as his rural experiences are now evident in his sculptures although they are so varied in styles that people think it might be several artists working on them. He said he is an outsider artist, who doesn’t know art words.

“I am all over the place,” said Porter.

During his time at the ship farm, he continued to make sculptures whenever he had some spare time, and over the years he accumulated dozens of them.

“The sculptures added up over a long period of time,” said Porter.

Eventually, people started to want to come and see them, and when they did, they wanted to pay for what they saw even though Porter initially declined, and that was how the sculpture park gradually got going.

Potter said that his urge to make a bull sculpture came from his experiences of growing up in St. Lawrence, Hand County, with a population of less than 200 people. The surrounding area, he said, has always been known as a cattle region and home to famous rodeo riders, such as the Etbauer brothers.

The Porters noted that although the majority of their social media followers were supportive of them after the incident, they still got a few comments stating that “the vandalism was justified in the name of God.” But the family said they had no assumptions on who committed the act of violence.

“Most people are good people, but you have a slim sliver of crazies,” said Porter. “They are clearly violent.”

In addition to simply being art pieces, Porter’s sculptures are also part of his personality. He said that he himself pounded every square inch of them with a hammer. His sister said that her brother puts his whole life in his sculptures, and the recent attack hit hard on him.

“He puts his whole life into his sculptures,” said Porter. “He can’t even sell them, they become a part of who he is, and he keeps them.”

The Porters family asked anyone who might have tips on the whereabouts of the guardians’ heads to contact the McCook County Sheriff’s Office at 605-425-2761. The family announced a $1,000 reward for the return of the stolen heads.

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Family seeks answers after vandalism incident in Porter Sculpture Park