This post is about a bullet hole through a watercolor.  It’s about a watercolor that was the last one done by the artist before her body stopped cooperating with her enough to paint, or to go to the places from which she liked to paint.  It’s about a bullet that came through the house from the outside, traveled through the painting and on out into the house, but did not travel through the artist who would normally be standing there if it had just been 15 minutes later. This post is about fixing something more than bursting paper.  This post is about why I love this work.

And so I adore that Tim Barrett was given a Fulbright grant and a MacArthur Fellowship to make paper, and that his work is getting the support and interest it deserves.  Here is a NY Times article.

I love this part: ““I describe the paper [Barrett-made paper] to the students,” Galvin says, “and I talk about the care, knowledge and aesthetic wisdom that went into making it. Then I tell them to go home and write something on it that makes it more interesting than it is when it’s blank.”

“If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud there will be no water; without water, the trees cannot grow; and without trees you cannot make paper. So the cloud is in here. The existence of this page is dependent on the existence of a cloud. Paper and cloud are so close. Let us think of other things, like sunshine. Sunshine is very important because the forest cannot grow without sunshine, and we humans cannot grow without sunshine. So the logger needs sunshine in order to cut the tree, and the tree needs sunshine in order to be a tree. Therefore you can see sunshine in this sheet of paper. And if you look more deeply … you see not only the cloud and the sunshine in it, but that everything is here: the wheat that became the bread for the logger to eat, the logger’s father … the paper is full of everything, the entire cosmos. The presence of this tiny sheet of paper proves the presence of the whole cosmos.”

I’m always interested in stories about merging new technologies and old, analog and digital, human and computer teams.  Here’s a good one:  DARPA ran a contest last month, with a $50,000 prize,  in which contestants were asked to use technologies to re-assemble shredded documents. The winning team, All Your Shreds Are Belong To Us, “used custom-coded, computer-vision algorithms to suggest fragment pairings to human assemblers for verification.   In total, the winning team spent nearly 600 man-hours developing algorithms and piecing together documents that were shredded into more than 10,000 pieces.”    Here are some photos.   The forum discussions look pretty interesting.

Yeah, I think that type of help could come in handy for re-assembling  letters destroyed by iron-gall ink such as those in my photo above.  And I’d like to know more about those mysterious “human assemblers” and their techniques!

I’m looking forward to working in the same building with the paintings conservators and staff of such a well-respected organization -  fun and interesting folks to boot!  The large sink, fume exhaust system and other features will allow me to work much more efficiently, providing a broader level of care for your works of art on paper and historic documents.    I’ll look forward to seeing you there – although please keep in mind that due to security measures, you’ll need to call ahead to set an appointment.  My new phone number is 720-295-2384 or you can email me at bethlhell at gmail dot com.

“My goal as a preservation administrator is not to fix all the broken things, but to make sure that the library becomes the kind of place that can and does fix things.”  And ” If the specific collections or items of concern never get tended to, that’s not great preservation, but if they get tended to while the roof starts to leak and the library starts to collect beyond its means, that’s not great preservation, either.” And “… by spending time to develop processes first and holding projects off, I think we’ll be able to do better work for a long time into the future.”

April 26th I’ll be with the Society of Rocky Mountain Archivists (SRMA) at the Denver Public Library from 10:30-12:30.

UPDATE: EVENT CANCELED: May 1, 12-4  is the DUArt! Conservation Roadshow.  This is a fundraiser for DUArt!, an organization that provides scholarships to art students at the University of Denver.

Join a group of art professionals:
conservators specializing in paper, paintings, and objects, an appraiser, a frame specialist, a gemologist, and a collections management professional, to learn about the preservation of your collections and heirlooms!
Consultations with the specialists will help you to assess:

 Condition
 Options for Treatment
 Value Characteristics
 Archival Framing Options
 Preventive Measures
 Optimum Environment
 Management of a Collection
Participants are invited to bring an object from their own collection for examination. Concurrent sessions will culminate in a discussion of interesting objects and preservation issues.
RSVP early; space is limited.  Registration Form
Admission: $50.00 ($65 non-members) for all participants bringing objects
or for those only observing: $25.00 DU ART! members
$35.00 for non-members