Monday, May 12, 2008

Wall to wall art

Shadbolt House murals are relocated to the National Gallery of Canada
By Dan Hilborn, Burnaby Now assistant editor
Published Nov. 22, 2003


For more than 40 years, they served as a daily inspiration for two of this nation's most famous and respected artists.

And now a team of professional conservators are working with the National Gallery of Canada to help preserve the two large abstract wall murals that were painted by Jack Shadbolt inside his long-time Capital Hill home.

This week, these unique pieces of British Columbia's and Burnaby's artistic and architectural heritage were carefully taken down and packed away for shipping to Ottawa.

Doris Shadbolt said the murals would probably have been destroyed had it not been for the interest and assistance of long-time family friend and confidante, Scott Watson, the director and curator of the Belkin Gallery at the University of B.C.

"These murals remind me of the early days, when we first got the house," Doris said in an interview from her new home in Vancouver this week.

The first mural, which was located on a dining room wall, reflected the natural themes of Shadbolt's work in the late 1950s. The second mural, which adorned a wall in the upstairs washroom, was inspired by Doris' fascination with handmade silver jewelry.

For the past two weeks, a small team of art conservators and building contractors have been working inside the former Shadbolt home on the task of safely removing the murals and having them carefully prepared for shipping to the most prestigious art gallery in the nation.

For Doris Shadbolt, the occasion brought back memories of an idyllic life on the edge of the teeming forest at the top of Capital Hill.

"It was an exciting time in our lives," she said. "We lived in the last house on the street. There was nothing behind us except a big woodsy area ... and it still is like that."

But the seclusion of the house is also one of the main reasons why this project was necessary. Doris, who is 85 years old, was no longer comfortable living in the secluded neighbourhood, far away from the nearest bus stop or shopping centre.

And once she made the decision to leave came the perplexing dilemma of what to do with the murals. When Watson contacted the the curator of the National Gallery of Canada to see if he was interested in housing the two murals, the idea was quickly turned into reality.

"Doris wanted to donate these murals and the National Gallery was interested," Watson said, adding that these two pieces are the only known surviving examples of the many murals painted by Jack Shadbolt.

His other murals included the tile work that once adorned the former B.C. Hydro headquarters building in downtown Vancouver, another on the side of the former Alcazar Hotel, and a third that may still exist underneath many coats of paint in the hallways of Kitsilano secondary school, where Shadbolt once taught.

Watson said Shadbolt's fascination with murals was inspired in part by his friend Arthur Erickson, the famed Vancouver architect, when the two young men were part of a West Coast movement that was trying to put art back into architecture.

"These murals tell a story," said Watson. "People painted on walls long before they painted on easels and that was a concept that intrigued Jack."

Leading the actual removal and preservation project is Cheryle Harrison, one of the country's best-known art conservators who also helped to restore the murals inside the B.C. legislative buildings.

She said one of the most challenging aspects of the job came out of the fact that the living room mural was painted onto a two- storey tall, load-bearing wall, meaning that the whole house would come tumbling down if the murals were not removed properly.

Contractor Colin Boyd, another family friend of the Shadbolts who in fact built a 1992 addition to the house around the living room mural, was given the delicate task of physically removing the two murals.

"Because the living room mural was on a load bearing wall, we had to build two new temporary walls around it to hold up the house," Boyd said. "Then we gingerly and delicately clad the murals to reinforce and stabilize them."

Protecting the murals from further damage required another unusual technique. Harrison, who studied art conservation in England, had the murals coated in tiny pieces of rice paper, covered under an inner sheet of spongy foam and then an outer layer of rigid foam.

"It's a multilayered system that is made to cushion and buffer the paintings from vibration and impact during their removal and relocation," Harrison said.

She noted that the paintings themselves are in quite good condition, considering the fact that one hung near a fireplace for its entire life, and the other was in the humid surroundings of a washroom.

On Friday, after the Burnaby NOW goes to press, the paintings will be packed up into specially designed crates for their final move to Ottawa, where they will be handed over to a team of conservators in preparation for their eventual public display.

Harrison said the she is proud to help preserve such a unique aspect of B.C.'s history.

"For me, one of the nicest aspects of these two murals is the fact that Jack decided to have them in his house," she said. "Jack was quite a prolific artists, and these are the two murals he chose to live with."

For Doris Shadbolt, the two murals bring back a flood of wonderful memories.

"Having them in the national gallery really pleases me. Jack used to tell me that he'd be satisfied as a painter if he could believe he produced one good thing that had some enduring value.

Well, maybe this is one and a half of that."

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