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Lori Goetsch: We had been looking at a plan for how to renovate
this room more generally. It's really a historic show place on campus. It's the original 1927
reading room of the first free standing library at K-State. As we started to look at what
we needed to do here, one of the things we looked at were the murals and floor murals
really represent the foundation of the land grant university. So I think that is one of
the major reasons why we wanted to preserve them and continue to keep them a piece of
K-State libraries and a piece of K-State's history.
Mary R. Schafer: At the beginning you do some tests, and figure
out how you would approach some of the problems. Then once you begin, you hope that those test
areas are the same across the entire mural. But I think just the sere volume of paint
that we were working with here was a challenge. I think the second challenge I would mention
is some of the water leak issues in this nice old building.
Lori Goetsch: We had some documentation that told us that
they had been restored at one point because of water damage but we could see some other
damage emerging. We didn't have a lot of expertise but we felt we wanted to have someone come
in and take a look at them.
Mary Schafer: It has been a four year project. Each mural
from start to finish would have been about 2 weeks of work. It's different looking at
the murals from down below and then getting up on a scaffolding and the paint is right
here and you can just see so many other little things; Clues on how the work was created,
condition issues, all kinds of things. We found some interesting information about OverMeyer's
painting technique. The paint has become transparent overtime and so you are able to see the grid
lines below. Those gridlines suggest that he was transferring a sketch on to the wall
to kind of guide the composition. And so we see those gridlines and it tells us a little
bit on how he got started. We use a product called Gamblin Conservation Paint and that's
a type of paint that is very easily reversible. In the future the next conservator that comes
along who treats these works we be able to remove that paint using solvent that has very
little effect on oil paint. With our cleaning we had to use some acid tone based solvent
mixtures. Someone down the rode won't need to use acid tone and that's very good for
the oil paint.
Lori Goetsch: We do have a lot of alumnus come back and
want to see that room they studied in when they were a student. Students now-a-days call
it the "Harry Potter" room. They think it sort of looks like the big dinning hall in
the Harry Potter movies. We get comments from students about it just makes me feel smarter
to be in this room that looks like am old library. I think one thing I would emphasize
is just the extreme appreciation of the Friends of the K-State Libraries. We would have been
able to get this work done without their financial support. They have taken us on as a multi-year
project and we would not be where we are today with the restoration of these murals without
that group.