Copyright 2004 Marin Independent Journal, a MediaNews Group publication Marin Independent Journal (Marin, CA)

April 6, 2004 Tuesday

SECTION: LIFESTYLES LENGTH: 1131 words HEADLINE: Restoring the glory BYLINE: Rick Polito, IJ reporter

BODY:

LATE IN A TYPICALLY glorious West Marin morning, with the sun flattering the San Geronimo Valley hillsides, Anne Rosenthal is standing on a stepladder in a shadowed hallway, bringing a halogen light fixture to focus on a 70-year-old vision of the landscape she is missing outside.

The vision she beholds is dimmed. Maurice Del Mue painted the idealized West Marin landscape in 1934 as part of the Depression-era Federal Public Works program and 70 years of wear in the hallway of the San Geronimo Valley Cultural Center is obvious to even the untrained eye.

But Rosenthal's eyes are very finely trained. The San Rafael art conservator helped save the WPA murals at Coit Tower in San Francisco. She has trained in Europe in the intricacies of preserving ancient art. She knows how paintings are constructed, the interactions of oil, canvas and time. Her tour through seven decades of grime and assorted forms of neglect is an inventory of abuse. The scratch here, the graffiti there, every speck and missing flake of paint detracts from Del Mue's original vision.

"There's something different about the wall in that corner," she says pointing to a stretch of distressed canvas. The plaster behind the wall was compromised somehow. "I've reattached it here with hypodermic adhesive," she says pointing again.

Along the mural's lower edge, the grime is thicker; thousands of children have scuffled through the hallway since the days when the building housed the Lagunitas School. "That's shoe wax," she says, trailing her finger along the frame edge.

There is more. "There are some big scratches that are four and five feet long," Rosenthal explains. The mural has survived for 70 years unprotected. There is no Plexiglas shield, no railing. People have brushed against it, leaned their copper riveted jeans against it. "Daniel" left a more specific mark. In the bark of one of Del Mue's imposing oaks, Daniel, probably a schoolboy, scratched his name.

"Daniel is famous," Rosenthal jokes. "Daniel is in all the reports."

Rosenthal's job is to restore the painting to its former glory. The Cultural Center raised money for the $20,000 project through donations and selling digitally restored prints of the mural. Rosenthal started her work in late March. She hopes to finish by early June. It is an arduous, exacting task, accomplished in inches.

"The whole job of doing this restoration is getting a holistic view of where it is now, what's been done to it and what can I do to bring it back to what it was originally," she says.

She must also hide her handiwork. Over the next many weeks, Rosenthal will apply paint in tiny strokes to Del Mue's canvas. Where the original paint is flaked or scraped away, she must delicately add carefully matched hues to the work of a man who, 70 years ago, stood where she is standing now. And she must leave no trace.

"When it's all done, you're just going to see Maurice Del Mue," she says. "You're not going to see me."

Rosenthal rolls the tools of the conservator's craft on a small cart. A tray of brushes varies in size and bristle. A large roll of medical grade cotton sheets bulges from a blue and white box. Fist-sized swabs of cotton are piled within quick reach and jelly jars brimming with a milky organic solvent are at her side. A mason jar to hold the volatile swabs sits close to the cushion she kneels on while she works.

Wearing a rubber-trimmed gas mask to protect against the noxious fumes and a magnification headset to focus on each millimeter, she proceeds slowly, working for several minutes on each palm-sized stretch of canvas. Around her, the business of the Cultural Center goes on. In the gallery behind the mural, an art show is being hung. Workers stop to examine Rosenthal's handiwork, Del Mue's vision. At times, small crowds gather.

She applies the emulsion with a thick foam brush, sweeping it delicately across Del Mue's field of poppies. She passes back over it with a smaller, bristled brush, reaching for a ball of cotton to delicately dab at the canvas. The heavily textured flower field is among the more challenging areas in the painting, each ripple of brush stroke a crevice for grime.

It is slow work and to the casual observer it is difficult to see what progress is being made. Then Rosenthal draws back from the canvas and sweeps back the magnification glasses to look at where she has been. From several feet away, the canvas comes more fully alive in the cleaned sections. Del Mue's poppies breath again.

"This part is so much fun because there are so many colors," she says looking down on the 4 by 4 inch section on which she has devoted a solid 10 minutes.

"That's basically the process, I just do it over and over and over again."

The mural covers 15 feet of wall and is 7.5 feet tall.

Rosenthal goes back to her work.

She has come to know Del Mue's mural very well and she has barely begun on the project. She knows a little about the man. He lived in San Francisco and Marin, leaving behind such artifacts as the Hills Brothers Coffee logo and at least four large murals in Marin. She knows a bit about the artist's palette. She has begun to understand how he put the mural together. "Paintings are composed of layers," she says. "And you have to know what you're looking at."

By the time she has done, she will know each millimeter.

"It's a different reality," she says, gesturing with the magnification glasses "It's a microscopic reality."

Rosenthal is excited to see the mural fully restored. She wants to erase Daniel's name from the oak bark. She wants to give the little girl on the hillside her face back.

"She's almost got a beard," Rosenthal says. "She's standing in the sunshine. She shouldn't have such a dark face, or a beard."

Pulling the mask back over her face and drawing the magnification glasses to her eyes, Rosenthal kneels to work on another universe of inches.

The work is slow. There are weeks to go. Each hairline crack will be repaired. Each flake of paint will be replaced. Imperfections in the tiny thousands will disappear. "When we have taken all that away, the illusion comes back," Rosenthal says, pulling the mask away from her mouth to speak.

Rosenthal will leave the hallway in early June. The mural will remain.

When the clouds and fog darken the hillsides outside, when the wildflowers have wilted and the green has faded to the treelines, a sunny afternoon in San Geronimo Valley will go on as it has for 70 years, a little brighter, a little cleaner, still waiting in a shadowed hallway.

INFORMATION

To buy a print of the Del Mue mural and help with the restoration project, contact Susan Lahr at 488-8888, extension 253.

Rick Polito can be reached at polito@marinij.com

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