Murals

Brennans Restaurant – New Orleans, LA 90″ x 270″ oil on canvas

Brennans had moved from its Royal Street site to a new space on Chartres in the French Quarter. The old mural that was situated in the wine tasting room was removed and reinstalled in new site. The mural was cleaned lined and restretched onto a new stretcher, inpainted various losses and varnished.

Greenwood Mississippi – Public Library Murals

Back in 2011 we were contracted to restore the wall murals in the Greenwood MS Public Library. The building was abandoned and all the utilities had been turned off for quite awhile, there were no environmental controls. The murals which were affixed to the exterior walls of the library were executed onto Masonite® panels. Because of the lack of environmental controls the murals had blistered, flaked, discolored over the years, generally speaking they were in terrible condition.
We removed the various panels from the wall of the library prepared them for shipping to our studio in New Orleans, LA. At the studio we consolidated the flaking and blistering by using a reversible adhesive, BEVA, and placing them on a vacuum hot table. We were able to consolidate the murals to a stable condition to enable us to fill the losses, inpaint areas of loss and then varnish them. They were returned to the city of Greenwood where they are now awaiting reinstallation within the old restored library building.

Greenwood, Mississippi – City Library Murals. 277″ x 96″ oil on masonite one of 12

Associated Projects:

These were projects I was involved in when I was studio manager at Margret Watherston Studios in NYC back in the 1980-1991

New York Housing Authority – Ilya Bolowtowsky Mural 260″ x 96″ oil on canvas

Watherston Studios was selected to remove various WPA era murals from some of the buildings in the Stuyvesant Housing Projects in Brooklyn, NY. .Some of the artist represented were Jackson Pollack , Ilya Bolotowsky, Paul Kelpe, Phillip Guston. The Ilya Bolotowsky featured below was originally installed into a social hall back in the last 1930’s the room eventually turned into an administrative office. The walls were painted a few times with various types of paint and then left for abandoned the room finally turned into a flooded storage area. . Then in 1982 the city raised the funds to remove them and have them conserved. Below are the various stages from the preparation to the removal of the mural from the wall to removal of the overpaints covering the original composition and the final outcome. After the surface overpaint was removed the painting was stretched on to a work strainer to enable access to the entire front and back surfaces. The painting was eventually lined onto linen. The losses were filled, sealed and inpainted.The mural was then stretched onto a new stretcher and varnished. A final surface varnish was applied to the finished piece. The mural is presently exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in Brooklyn, NY.

https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/exhibitions/3270

N.C.Wyeth – MetLife Murals

This was a project in New York City back in 1982- 1985 various sizes: 8′ x 12′ to 26′ x 9′ oil on canvas

Metropolitan Life Insurance Company had hired the studio to remove 14 murals that where installed in the corporate head quarters of Metropolitan Life Building on 23rd Street and Park Avenue in NYC.

The murals had been executed by N.C. Wyeth back in 1940’s as a commission for MetLife. and were on the wall in the company cafeterias and various hallways of the building until 1982 when the decision was made to remove them from the walls and have them lined, cleaned and addressing damages from years of neglect.

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