Derek Alan Modrok, a 49-year-old Florida resident, admitted to running his car into a tall, blue sculpture of a rabbit titled Thunderbunny by American artist Hunt Slonem, police said earlier this week. The sculpture, which has an estimated value of $300,000, resided in Justin Flippen Park in the city of Wilton Manors, just north of Fort Lauderdale.
Modrok also admitted to vandalized another piece of art, a popsicle statue by Craig Berube-Gray at nearby Rachel Richardson Park, earlier this month. Police arrested Modrok after surveillance footage depicted him in the act.
Slonem, for his part, first heard about the act of vandalism when NBC Miami reached out to him for a quote, and since then he’s been processing the attack. It’s not the first time he’s lost a piece of public art.
“9/11 was worse, I lost an 80-foot mural,” Slonem told ARTnews, somewhat mystified that this kind of violence once again found its way to his work. “I was just shocked. It’s just such a strange thing, the fact that it’s happened before and the fact that it happened again.”
Thunderbunny, at 13 feet-7 inches and made of 6,500 pieces of blue glass, took a year to make and was installed in the park in May 2022 after local gallery Art Gallery 21 worked with the city to loan the sculpture from New River Fine Art in Fort Lauderdale. The sculpture was due to travel to a botanical garden, but those plans have now been stalled. Slonem and the commissioners are reviewing the work to see if repairs are even possible as the work sustained heavy structural damage. Slonem said it would take a couple more days to ascertain what can be done.
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