"The more you learn, the more you learn waht you don't know."
- Heather Densley, art conservatorSince ancient times, people have understood the importance of protecting works of art from contact with such potentially harmful elements such as water, smoke and fire.
In Greece and in Rome, when art was damaged, the original artists were employed to restore the work. Thye ancients beleived the artist who created the iece would be more familiar with the work's material and construction. Even today, artists are asked to repair their own work when damaged. Unfortunately this has proven unwise. Artists rarely, if ever, return a puiece to its original condition because their creative disposition compels them to continually modify and refine their work.
The best way to restore an original work of art is to contact an art conservator who deals with a large variety of practices and procedures - above and beyond restoration - combining science with art. One local conservator, Heather Densley, has been working in the field for more than a decade and is amazed by what she still needs to learn.
"I had no idea I was going to bo doing this job." Densley said in a recent interview at the Museum of Church History and Art where she cleans and restores oil paintings one day a week.
Six yars ago, after she was married, Densley volunteered to work at the front desk of the Springville Museum of Art. "I've always loved the fine arts and I wanted to work at the museum so I could be around it." Eventually, Densley became friends with the museum's director, Vern Swanson, who was working with a Russian art dealer at the time. Both Swanson and the dealer were busy bringing Russian paintings into this country, and they needed another conservator to help clean the work.
"When he "(Swanson) told me about it, there was something that just really clicked," said Densley. "I became very interested and kept bugging him about it because I decided I really wanted to learn more about it."
Swanson set Densley up to study art conservation with Liz Provost of Salt Lake City. "I worked with her for about six months and then began working on the Russian Paintings."
Even though there are specialized school for learning art conservation - the Instituto Centrale del Restauro in rome, The Courtauld Institute in London and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna are just a few - an apprenticeship is still the best way to master the skill. "It was really just hands on," Densley said of her apprenticeship with Provost.
"She would show me what to do while I worked with her. This is how I've gotten all of my training, working side by side with another conservator."
It was during this time that Densley learned that conservators must be aware of and adhere to certain fundamental rules. For example, it is more important that an object be preserved than made more aesthetically pleasing by cosmetic cleaning. A conservator must not change or try to improve the artist's original composition. Nor should attempts be made to finish any incomplete areas. The intention of the conservator is to recover and preserve, as far as possible, the original appearance of the object. Nothing must be added to a painting in mending, retouching, or varnishing which cannot be removed without risk of damage.
As Densley got better at cleaning and restoring paintings, people began calling her. However, she still felt inadequate to perform the work requested. "My husband was going to be doing an internship in Washington, D.C., so I decided to try and find someplace where I could continue my education."
She made lots of phone calls but "no one would let me into their lab because I didn't have a masters degree." After moving to the capital with her husband, Densley picked up the phone book and began calling conservators with private practices. Many recommended Justine Winset, a conservator who did work for the White House and the Supreme Court. Instead of calling, Densley went to Winset's studio.
"She started asking me the typical questions like `do you have a degree?' I told her no, and that I just wanted to get better at what I was doing. I told her I'd work for free, that I just wanted the experience." Winset didn't act very interested so "I asked her if she had a degree. She didn't. `I got all my training from hands on experience,' she said. I told her that's what I was trying to do." Winset eventually let Densley come to work; she even paid her.
After Winset, Densley had the opportunity to study with Phil Robison in London, England, when her hustand was working as a clerk in Parliament. "What I practice now is mostly what I learned in England," she said. It's a very tedious and exacting job."
Because Densley wanted to specialize in early Utah oil paintings, she took a John Hafen (1856-1910) painting with her to England. "I wanted to know how to restore a Utah painting because they're very different from restoring and old English painting."
Densley prefers working on older paintings to newer ones because "as a painting ages the oil hardens. The harder the paint, the easier it is to clean." Early Utah art is difficult, however, because the artists "mised different paints together and you're never sure what to do. On a typical early Utah painting the first thing you would do is clean the painting. If you've got a soot layer on the piece, I've found a solution with the primary component being ammonia to work well. You have to be careful, though, because ammonia has a high PH that can take off the oil. So it's got to be balanced and buffered so it will clean the painting without destroying the original."
Currently Densley is restoring an early mural by J. Leo Fairbanks (1878-1946) that was removed from the Logan Temple. The painting, a representation of the Restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood, temporarily hangs in an underground workspace on Tample Square. It is here that Densley works her magic.
Thoush she is a mother of two young children and the wife of a law student, Densley continues to work hard at her occupation. But there are rewards. During our interview, Densley was cleaning and repairing Arnold Friberg's "Stripling Warriors" from the Book of Mormon series.
Not bad for someone who had no idea she could do the work.