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Milwaukie sculpture honors police dog
Milwaukie artist Mark McLean donated a black basalt sculpture of another police dog to the Clark County Sheriffs Office, inspired by deputies mourning the 2011 loss of Kane to a stabbing by a suspect on the run.
Titled Raising Kane, the sculpture is made from the same material as a sculpture of Vancouver police dog Dakota, who was shot in the line of duty in 2007. McLean says that he enjoys donating his time to meaningful projects.
Im glad to have gotten this done, because I got sick and had to hire an assistant, he said. "I like to see it when a police officer get in touch with his feelings, because they usually have to maintain their professionalism. This is also a way for me to show how much I appreciate for what they do, and the whole department will often thank me for it."
The sculpture of Dakota is in Vancouver's East Precinct building. Deputy Brian Ellithorpe, the Clark County Sheriff's Office canine unit trainer, hasn't announced where "Raising Kane" will be housed. But Deputy Rick Osborne, who was Kane's handler and has been too broken up over the incident to talk publicly, expressed his appreciation to McLean for the outpouring of support.
"Deputy Osborne kept coming over here to inspect the sculpture while I was working on it," McLean said. "He was really attached to Kane, and he told me that my piece looked just like him."
McLean, 60, has had a long career of showing in downtown Portland galleries and accepting commissions nationwide. Another of his sculptures sits in a New Jersey parish a foot-and-a-half wide, 400-pound replica of a millstone to remind priests of the New Testament admonition that anyone who harms children should have a heavy millstone hung around his neck and be thrown into the sea.
McLean has hired Sean Hietpas of Ash Masonry as an assistant in his projects.