This piece, titled "Fear of Being Forgotten", was done by my sister, Shannon Bonatakis. It was recently stolen from the gallery where it was on display. I am reposting here the bulletin she put up on myspace. Please, please, please.... repost this anywhere you can! I also have it up on my flickr.
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About a week ago a painting of mine was stolen from Joyengine, the gallery I've had it hanging at for the last year or so. I just found out because I've been overseas for a week, so I am only now getting to post this and hope that you all, if you could, will repost this for me. This piece has hundreds of hours of my life chronicled into it. It has never been marked for sale, means more to me than any chunk of money ever could, and has always been intended to be given to the person I originally created it for and about. I'm not sure that any person who could bring themselves to steal someone's work like this could ever understand that, but perhaps they could think about it for a few seconds and have a change of heart.

Listen - I don't care who you are, I don't care why you think you deserve my painting more than I do, and I don't care what your intentions were with stealing it. I just want it back. Stealing somebody's artwork is so audaciously disrespectful, I can't even figure out who would do something like that.

If you by chance see this hanging somewhere or you were by chance somehow involved in this, please do the right thing and return it. Wrap it in plastic and leave it at Joyengine's front door. Mail it to them. Do it completely anonymously, I don't care. Just return it. It means more to me than it does to whoever took it. And if you could, please repost this. Perhaps somehow in this crazy web of millions of myspacers this could fall under the right eyes.

Joyengine's address is 2037 13th Street Boulder, CO 80302. Their phone number is 303-449-1967. Please contact them (or myself) if you know anything about this.

Many thanks,
Shannon Bonatakis