Lorraine Della Pena has lost her head. On one hand I mean that fairly literally but, in terms of the art in question, well, that is most definitely the figurative kind. But I probably should start this blog connection tale at the beginning.
Anyone who reads this site with any regularity might remember that I posted a video a few weeks back sent to me by Lorraine Della Pena. It showed several fox kits romping with their mom on Lorraine's property. Except for the carcass of something dead they were dragging about, it was very cute stuff.
Well, a few days later I received an email through the blog account from a man named Denis Fabiszak who is the director of the East Hampton library. He said he was looking to get in touch with Lorraine Della Pena and/or her husband Nicholas. He gave me his cell phone number and asked me to pass his email along to them. Although the inclusion of the cell phone number was a bit odd, I just assumed maybe they were visiting the Hamptons, took out a library book, and forgot to return it. So, of course, I passed the message on to Lorraine.
Well, what he really wanted to inquire about was much more interesting. The basic story was aired on ABC Eyewitness News some days earlier. Here is the link to that segment titled "Big head mystery near Long Island construction site".
What a story! The first thing I noticed when I watched the piece was that the bust in question looked very much like Lorraine herself. Turns out it IS a sculpture of Lorraine done years ago by her husband.
My next question was how did it get to East Hampton? Lorraine told me that the art work was on display at the Della Penn house in Woodstock and then given to a friend in Sag Harbor. OK, that much made sense but how did it end up on the construction site?
Apparently, their friend was having some construction done at her house. One of the construction workers on the job, afraid that the piece would get damaged, put it on his truck to get it out of the way. He then forgot about it, went to the library site where he was also working, and a co-worker took it out of his truck and placed it at that site. Those workers hadn't been back to the library since so they didn't know about the uproar that they had created.
Lorraine told me that, at this point, the East Hampton library would like to keep the sculpture in it's garden facing the children's wing.
Over the years I have gotten emails from long lost friends, girl friends, and relatives of the WCA members that I have posted about on the blog. I have almost always forwarded those emails on to the person in question. Some of the stories are really amusing and the connections and/or re-connections that folks have made have been awesome. But, although the truth of how it got on the construction site is less fantastical then one linking it to a headless body in Pennsylvania, this still ranks as one of my favorite blog related connection stories of all time!
