Historic mural gets spruced up
A historic painting in Siloam Springs’ old post office was recently cleaned by conservation specialist Rick Parker.
The mural, located inside the building on South Broadway Street, was painted in 1940 by Bertrand Adams as part of the Works Progress Administration’s Arts Program. It is titled “Lumbering in Arkansas” and depicts a lumber mill in operation. The painting is currently owned by the Smithsonian American Art Museum while the building that houses it is owned by the city and leased by Phat Tire Bike Shop.
Because the Smithsonian owns the mural, the city is contracted to keep it up to National Historic standards, according to Parker.
Parker, of Gentry, is a professional associate with the American Institute of Conservation and is licensed to work on public art. The city hired Parker to look at the mural and he met with city officials in August. There was a discussion about possibly moving the mural, but Parker said it would not have been a good idea.
“We had a discussion about possibly moving it,” Parker said. “That has been done with some of these but that would have been phenomenally damaging. The way this thing is adhered to the wall and put on it would tear it [the mural] up.”
At first the mural appeared to be in bad shape but after conducting several tests on the paint to determine its condition,
Parker realized that the mural was just dirty. Parker did not find any evidence that the mural had been cleaned earlier, just dust and particulates.
After determining that the mural just needed a good cleaning, Parker began looking at different formulas that he could use to clean the mural.
“I came with several different solutions to see what might work and what might not,” Parker said. “In this case I probably had three or four different formulations and everything I did was too strong.”
Parker kept switching to milder and milder cleaners until he ended up using a detergent from England called Napalm 4C that
Parker said is no longer on the market. One of the immediate problems that Parker saw was that since he would be working vertically, he had to worry about the detergent spilling off the mural, so he gelled the detergent but it would not wet the surface and penetrate the dirt.
“I had to use Carbopol 940 and Triton X100 which allowed it to stay on the surface a little bit longer and wet it a little bit longer without getting to the paint. All those little bugs were worked out and then it just sailed,” Parker said.
Parker said the mural was an easy project. The only difficulty that he had was getting up and down the ladder because of his knees. He began work on the mural in November and said the project only took 10 days to complete.
“I didn’t work on it full time because it is up and down ladders and my knees aren’t what they were at 20, and I can tell when it’s time to take a break,” Parker said.
Parker is the owner of Parker Conservation Inc., according to his biography provided by City Administrator Phillip Patterson. Parker did his undergraduate studies at John Brown University and his graduate work at the Smithsonian Institution’s Furniture Conservation Training Program in Suitland, Md., it states.
Parker became a staff member in that project and has lectured at numerous institutions such as the Smithsonian, M.I.T., Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities and the Canadian Conservation Institute, the biography states. Parker has worked on objects in the White House, USS Constitution (Old Ironsides), The Cherokee Nation, William J. Clinton Presidential Library and the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library.