Restoration

Cold, with wind, 15 degrees when I leave the house, but I'm certainly not going to be late for the painting repair. The conservator arrives just as we open, Mike, with the tools of his trade. Starts by lighting and photographing the painting in situ, then we set him up in the Board Room. Tells us that this kind of almost puncture is common, removes the backing, dampens the back of the spot and puts it under weights. The canvas, he says, has memory, but can't be rushed. He looks at the Circus Show while waiting for the canvas to remember. For the last 20 years or so, everything a conservator does must be reversible, theory being that will be better ways of doing things a few years down the pike. He wears a magnifying head set that would be great for studying frogs. All the fibers are there, he says, no need for a patch on the back, turns the painting over, realigns the bent fibers. A coarse weave, he says, makes his job easier. Uses a few miniscule drops of water-soluble glue. We treat him to lunch at the pub, and he talks about the major restoration of a huge Thomas Hart Benton mural, 12 feet by 260 feet, from some Chicago World's Fair. We talk about similarities between Benton, Grant Wood, and Clarence Carter. After lunch, he pulls a stack of paper from one of his bags, and on them are several thousand dabs of color, with the mix noted in a personal shorthand; mixes watercolor paint, no water, until he gets what he wants, then with an incredibly small brush, fills in where the paint had chipped. Looking, constantly, at the surrounding brush strokes. It's magic, I swear. He works two hours before lunch, two hours after, and I can no longer see where the damage was. It's gone, invisible. He bills his time at between $100 and $150 bucks an hour. He's got all the work he can do. He did this job for $500, no travel time, we bought him lunch, because he knew, if he did a good job, we'd use him again, money in the bank. He starts another Benton mural on the fourth of January. Dealing with art is a life very much like doing theater, so vertically integrated. To get an MFA in Conservation, a three year course, then a year as apprentice, you must have undergraduate majors in Art History, Organic Chemistry, and something else. Three of them, I remember that, but he talked as he worked and I was watching so closely some of what he said slipped by. Four schools in North America offer this degree, one in Ontario, where he went, NYCU, Buffalo, Delaware. What an interesting life. I'm rarely envious of what anyone else does, content in my life and the labors, but I'm almost jealous. Cool tool kit. And you stay clean. What a job. And you get to restore Benton, with a magnifying glass, from six inches away, fuck me in the vestry on Sunday, what a great job. Maybe, if I had it to over again, I could have done that. Not disappointed in this, where I find myself. I can't be depressed if I try, all I have to do is open my eyes. I was looking today, at those hard blue berries the female green-briar sets: birds pluck them, then spit them out. Thus my species advances. Celebrating Darwin. I'm not sure why I said anything. Fucking crows, man.