Updated July 5, 2013: The Pittsburg Police Department says two coal buckets painted by area artists were overturned at about 3:57 a.m. on Friday.
Major Brent Narges tells us both buckets were in the 300 block of North Broadway and both received some damage.
Surveillance footage is being reviewed but a suspect has not been identified at this time.
Reported June 14, 2013 by Kelly Reid: Drive down Broadway in Pittsburg and you'll see signs of local history. It's not something you see every day. A large, concrete bucket of coal. Each one is uniquely painted with a personal touch by local artists.
Brett Dalton of SEK Artsfest says "Not a lot of communities do this. And some of them that do it, do it very well. And we think we're right up there with them."
"As you go by and look they are all different. All different colors of the rainbow, they're really phenomenal." says Downtown District Coordinator, Jeff Wilbert.
26 different buckets lie between 1st and 8th Street and along Broadway. And each one has a personal story to tell.
Alana White, a Pittsburg artist who focuses on 'abstract' art, designed a colorful bucket lined with baseball size cards with different colorful designed. She says "being a coal miner wasn't exactly a glamorous job. Hard work, long hours. Each person was an individual that help set up our economy. So each card is representative of a coal miner. Each unique, different and see different things in each one."
Kelci Cooper, a commercial artist in Pittsburg based her bucket off of Pittsburg history. "I took kind of a layout of Pittsburg, and found some really neat kind of older signs. Kind of staples in the community that people would know about and redrew them." she says.
Time was of the essence for the artists. Once their design was approved, they had only four weeks to create their masterpiece.
"From the time I was chosen, until probably a week before it was due I was still designing." Cooper says.
"Thankfully I had a lot of these made out, and I made new ones, so I have a stockpile of these." says White.
Officials hope the displays will attract more business to the Downtown Pittsburg area. The buckets will be on display all summer until Labor Day.
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