Police find sculptures after call

HOT SPRINGS - Information from a scrap-metal company enabled Hot Springs police to recover a number of large steel sculptures that were reported stolen from an artist’s garden.

On Monday, police arrested Sam Dwayne Brown, 50, on a parole violation warrant at Dewey Cook’s Scrap Iron & Metal Co., while Brown was there selling scrap aluminum.

At the police station, Brown was shown photographs of the sculptures sold to Dewey Cook’s and admitted to selling the sculptures for about $100, the police report said.

Brown was charged with theft by receiving more than $25,000, a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

The artist, Jeanfo, had filed a report with police Friday about the missing sculptures. He said he thought the sculptures were stolen Thursday from their display area behind his Rugg Street home.

The former French civil engineer, born Jean Alex Faure, displays the sculptures behind his home - the former Robert E. Lee Elementary School, which closed in 1960. He has used the school’s old gym as his studio, classrooms as a gallery for his paintings and the old playground as his sculpture garden.

“I did not hear anything,” he said, when asked about the noise involved in someone loading and moving sculptures from his yard. “I am sleeping under air conditioning and I am deaf. I am 82 now.”

Detectives with the Police Department received information that the sculptures were sold as scrap metal Thursday and Friday.

An employee said six pieces of the artwork that Brown reportedly sold to the company had been recovered and separated from scrap metal in the yard. The pieces were photographed and identified by Jeanfo as the items taken from his backyard, the police report said.

Jeanfo said the pieces are valued around $133,000.

“So much scrap comes in - people clean up property and bring things in like the old saying, ‘One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.’ People will scrap anything,” Dewey Cook’s Greg Ketzer said.

However, when the sculptures were taken to the yard last week, “The police were called. We have known Detective [Les] Jessup for years and have a good working relationship with him,” Ketzer said.

Dewey Cook’s employees told detectives they wouldkeep an eye out for the sculptures’ seller. On Monday, Brown returned to scrap additional items.

Ketzer said he and his family also have known Jeanfo for a long time and offered to give the artist some metal if he needed it to repair the sculptures.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 18 on 09/01/2013

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