Northeast Harbor exhibit stirs debate ‘Wall of Bones’ borders Veterans Memorial Park

MOUNT DESERT – Polly Heel sees the bones of her family when she looks at the bronze “bone wall” located just outside the north boundary of the Veterans Memorial Park in the village of Northeast Harbor.

She sees the bones of her father, who perished in the Atlantic during World War II after helping his shipmates to safety. She sees the bones of her uncle, who died aboard the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor.

“It’s very, very, very sensitive and painful for me to look at it,” Heel said after the animal bone wall and five other sculptures done by Philadelphia sculptor Steve Tobin were installed Wednesday morning around the war memorial for a summer-long exhibit.

“It reminds me that my father’s and my uncle’s bones are laying somewhere. And there’s nowhere I can cherish them. Nowhere I can do honor to them,” Heel said. “It’s hard to explain to people if they haven’t lost somebody.”

Heel and her husband, Harvey Heel, who served three years in the Korean War, came to the memorial Wednesday and beseeched Tobin to move the bone wall farther away from the memorial.

Harvey Heel had asked Mount Desert selectmen on Monday to make sure the bone wall couldn’t be seen from the memorial and thought the board had agreed.

But selectmen understood that Harvey Heel, speaking on behalf of veterans, had asked only that the bone sculpture not be within the peripheral vision of anyone visiting the monument.

The misunderstanding led to bad feelings and an emotional discussion Wednesday morning between Tobin and the Heels while Tobin’s 12-man crew waited hours for a resolution.

“The politics of this is wonderful, but I’m glad I’m not part of it,” said Don Cousins, a Mount Desert native who was visiting Wednesday from Rhode Island and watched the installation.

“I think this is fabulous,” Cousins said. “Not just the art itself, but to have an artist of his caliber here for the summer.”

While Cousins looked over Tobin’s art, Polly Heel walked down to the granite war memorial with Tobin and spoke to him quietly of her losses and her fear that veterans in the town would be offended to see the 4-ton sculpture, made out of 1,000 buffalo and cow bones encased in bronze, so close to where war dead are honored.

Tobin, an acclaimed sculptor whose work has been shown around the world, walked the sprawling park with the Heels and twice changed the placement of the wall.

Nonetheless the Heels, who wanted the sculpture moved in back of the tennis courts out of sight, left the park disheartened.

“I’ve seen too many wars, and I’ve seen too much pain. I don’t want to see any more,” Polly Heel said later Wednesday. “It’s wrong what he did. I’m sorry. That may be art to him, but to me it stands for something much different.”

Standing on the green after the Heels left, Tobin saidhis bone wall sculptures have never been linked to wars or human loss and so he did not anticipate the controversy. He tried to be respectful to the people who are offended by the juxtaposition of the memorial and bone sculpture, he said, and hoped that in the end his artwork would inspire the community to talk about death and the emotion and pain it carries.

“To bury our feelings about the loss of our loved ones is not good,” Tobin said. “I understand that for some people [the bone wall] brings pain closer to the surface, but do we hide our emotions? In the end, I think this debate will be healthy for the community.”

Since visiting Maine in the summers as a boy, Tobin has been inspired by nature. He has dedicated his career to creating unique, nature-based sculptures, such as a bronze tree root or an urchin crafted of steel, both on display in Northeast Harbor, as well as flowers, waterfalls and the forest floor.

Tobin said he tries to show the hidden and ordinary beauty of nature, the parts that people don’t typically see or appreciate, including the bone wall that was meant to represent the struggle of animals against man and the never-ending rebirth of nature.

“In a museum, everyone knows they will get art. But out here, we’re breaking new ground, and it does challenge people,” Tobin said. “It stirs emotion, and that’s what it’s supposed to do. If we got no response from the art, we would not be succeeding.

“I think we are reanimating this war memorial with this dialogue,” he said.

Town officials who gathered near the memorial to watch some of the sculptures installed agreed that any art is going to incite debate and differences of opinion. But they were confident that Tobin’s exhibit would prove popular to residents and summer visitors and draw more people than ever to the village.

“I think it’s amazing,” Selectman Emily Damon Pascal, who lobbied the town to allow the exhibit, said as she watched the installation Wednesday.

She worked with Tobin to make last-minute placement changes after being approached at the park by the Heels.

“I respect the people who are against it,” she said, “but this wall does not represent Cambodia. It’s art.”