Mission: Mural Rescue – Conserving 50 Years of Edmonton Public Art

This is the first installment of a multi-year project which will be documented on the YEGArts blog.

On a freezing afternoon in February, the Edmonton Arts Council Conservation lab, tucked in the corner of a west-end industrial park, looks like Command HQ for a complex recovery operation. Rubbermaid tubs full of equipment – spray bottles, brushes, knives, tissue paper – are neatly stacked next to plastic sheeting cut in complex shapes, and protective apparel. Public Art Conservator Andrea Bowes is busily diluting odiferous bottles of Lee Valley Codfish glue, while Conservation Director David Turnbull scans his workplan for what could be the most complex project ever undertaken by his department.

Their mission is to remove, restore, and reinstall a 50-year-old, 1600 square foot, 10,000lb mural. The untitled artwork, created by Alberta artist Norman Yates in 1967, is painted directly on a semi-loadbearing wall in the Stanley A. Milner Library Circulation Department on the main floor. The location places the artwork directly in the path of the extensive renovations which will reshape and transform the building, so the team is working against the clock to remove the art.

“This is the only known surviving artwork in Edmonton’s Public Art Collection commissioned for Canada’s Centennial, so I feel we’re preserving an important part of Edmonton’s art history,” says David. ​“Norman Yates was an important artist in the city. He founded the graduate program in the University of Alberta’s Department of Fine Arts, mentored generations of artists, and before he died in 2014, also kept up a thriving art practice.”

Born in Calgary in 1923, Yates studied at the Ontario College of Art and Design following service during World War II with the Royal Canadian Air Force. Following graduation, he taught at the college for three years before accepting a post at the University of Alberta in 1954 where he taught for 33 years.

The mural under conservation is one of Yates’s ​“landspaces” a technique he devised for painting sprawling, almost three-dimensional paintings of the Canadian landscape. Students and visitors to the University of Alberta campus are very familiar with one of his largest works, North and West on the north wall of the Education Building on the U of A campus. The Centennial artwork in hues of green and blue, is a smaller hidden treasure.

“A large part of conservation is planning,” remarks David. ​“This is a hugely complex project. The mural is painted on plaster that was applied directly onto a concrete wall; there is a 2‑foot gap between the back of the mural and cinder block wall so there is little room for maneuvering behind the structure; the entire mural must be cut and moved in sections while preserving the inch or so of plaster it’s painted on. In addition, the work is physical, uncomfortable, and hot. So, success is not just about what are we going to do, but how are we going to do it?”

The first step is preservation of the artwork surface. David and team researched different methods of mural restoration and removal, and settled on a version of the Italian stacco a massello method. “…it was developed in Italy for removing frescoes. You take canvas and a lot of adhesive. Essentially you glue the fabric to the face of the painting and then you bash away the backside and the material holds the front and you are literally the art component. But you destroy the architecture; the art would be put on another support and reinstalled somewhere else.”

“What we’re doing with the Centennial Mural is, to quote M*A*S*H, a bit like delicate meatball surgery – we’re stabilizing then evacuating so we can do the real surgery later.”

To preserve the Yates mural, the team spent a week facing the artwork with a layer of Japanese tissue paper and the thinned-out fish glue. ​“We cut the tissue in 1 foot squares,” explains public art conservator Andrea Bowes. ​“We then placed one piece of paper on the mural surface, painted it with water and then cross-grained a second layer over the first with glue. As we go along we also overlapped the edges to give more strength. That way, if some of the paint gets dislodged when we remove the mural, the tissue will hold it in place. We are using the Japanese tissue because it has long strands which make it incredibly strong despite its lightness.” The team can then tease off the tissue facing with water and paintbrushes.

Getting the mural from Edmonton’s downtown to west end is the next challenge. Painted on plaster applied over a cement wall, the mural is incredibly heavy. There’s no room for a crane or large team of workers, so the three conservation experts must remove it in sections. ​“Andrea calculated that a 4X8 section of the mural and wall will weigh about 2000 lbs,” says David. ​“With removing the excess concrete and metal mesh that’s behind the artwork, we hope to cut down that weight quite a bit, but it’s still going to be substantial. So, we’ll have to cut out sections in manageable sizes. There’s going to be a lot of grunting and groaning!”

Cutting the mural into a grid would make removal easier but the conservation team is going to let the artwork itself dictate the cut lines. ​“There are natural lines where there are colour shifts and within the pattern itself so if we follow them as much as we can and cut into the natural lines, we can limit the amount of restoration work we may have to do later.”

The team traced the artwork shapes and patterns onto thick plastic sheets which have been used to make plywood formwork in the shape of each section and then lined with foam. ​“We’ll place the forms on the face of the mural with the foam facing inward so the paint is protected. Then we’ll sandwich the mural with lumber from the back so as the old supports are removed, it doesn’t just fold and crumble. The last step is to pull the section out, lie it face down, and high fives all around!” 

Complimented on the brilliance of the plan, David cautions; ​“It’s all theoretical, we’ll have to go through a few sections to make sure this is feasible and if not, change direction on the fly! It’s going to be hot and uncomfortable work — there isn’t a lot of air movement and a lot of dust, so we’ve brought in an air handling unit. This is really the same principle as excavating a dinosaur skeleton; how they stabilize the bones, cover them in plaster and undercut, then dig out from underneath.”

The test piece is successful, so the team will continue with the plan. Once the mural is removed like a giant jigsaw, it will be transported to the lab where the painstaking work begins. ​“First we’ll remove any residual substrate so we’re left with just the plaster which is about an inch thick. Then we’ll attach the sections to a lightweight backing like an aluminum honeycomb – something with a lot of dimensional stability and strength. After that we’ll tease off the tissue paper facing and repair and restore the surface. The last step will be to engineer a hanging system and a way to reassemble the artwork with the least amount of onsite restoration.”

The entire process will take about three years with the intent that when the construction crew is completing final fit-up for the Milner Library, the conservation team will be able to install the mural in its new home.

Asked what he believes the entire journey will entail, David shrugs and grins. ​“A lot of adapting on the fly, changing plans, and figuring out what’s going to work and not work for the sake of the artwork. There are so many unknowns that you just have to deal with it as you go… and a lot of chiropractic visits!”