Week begining 7th at the Pinacoteca

Its been a busy week so we thought it was best to do sumaries of everything this week! Our Pinacoteca projects and life outside of the Pinacoteca! Our big update is that we moved into Valeria´s appartment on Monday! We went straight from the bus station into work on Monday afternoon- tired and smell but eager to conserve as ever 😉 Teodora drove Valeria, Issy and I back to Valeria´s. We felt like we were in some type of children´s film about orphans being adopted by a long lost relative. Lovely Aunty Val had made us loads of home made vegetable soup, washed and ironed all of our clothes and made us beautiful beds right out of a fairy tale book- all of which is exactly what you need after 17 hours on a coach and a weekend of mainly eating bread and crisps.

For Tuesday and Wednesday Valeria gave us packed lunches of rice and vegetable dishes that she had made herself along with salad and a bottle of dressing! We thought we would come back to England much tougher and more world weary but now we´re used to this cushy lifestyle I doubt it will happen!

We think that we have brought some type of bad luck to Valeria´s building as the following things have happened since out arrival:

1. Valeria dropped a glass.

2. On Wednesday night the man in control of the hot water turned it off to spite one of the other people in the building and it didn´t come back on until Thursday morning.

3. When it did come back on it was temperamental, which lead to Valeria forgetting to turn the hot tap on the shower off before she went to Russia on Thursday. We didn´t arrive back until 11pm on Thursday so the hot water must have been running for about 10 hours and had stained lots of Valeria´s photos, paintings and walls. We spent about an hour drying everything out!

In other news we went out to our favourite Brazilian bar, Veloso  with our French friend Emmanuel who we met at Uvaia Hostel!

 Everybody decided that Frida Baranek´s sculpture had been cleaned and polished to an appropriate level so Monday morning was our first Fridaless morning in a couple of weeks!

Isabelle :-  This week I have been using water colours to retouch the old and new fills around the wrists, main body and base of the sculpture. I am sorry to say there is not much more to report about this!

Agar Agar – Tatiana has also returned from her honey moon this week so I have been frantically quizzing her about agar agar.

She has taught me so much in just a few days; it is all very interesting!

Tatiana has been working on a piece that has just been laser scanned ready for casting in bronze. The sculpture is made from gesso and was very dirty all over; you could almost not tell it was white underneath!

This sculpture has been cleaned three ways, using a layer of normal agar agar 5%  in water, then a layer of latex and Anjusil and finally a layer of 5% agar agar and 2% EDTA or Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid. EDTA is an aminopolycarboxylic acid or a salt soap. Used with agar agar it helps absorb more dirt and give an even cleaner better finish. It does not change any of the physical properties of the agar agar and is made as you would do normally then add the EDTA after cooking; it only affects its cleaning abilities. The final results are fantastic, the piece is white all over, a big difference.

 

The Second layer of agar agar and EDTA, great results!

She has also taught me about using latex mixed with Anjusil. She learnt this technique while on a professional placement in Spain. Anjusil is an ammonia based product that does not seem to have any information about it online, Tatiana also has had trouble finding any information about this too and has worked out its properties by trial and error.

The agar agar has very different properties to the latex and absorbs more dirt; it penetrates into the material, removing not just the surface dirt but the layers beneath without damaging the surface or having to use any harsh chemicals or mechanical methods. Whereas the latex is very different, it is mixed with Anjusil and brushed onto the surface forming only a thin layer a couple of millimeters, or as thick as you can make it as it is a very thin mixture. The latex mix then will only remove surface dirt, this would be a good technique on some materials but when used to clean the majority of materials agar agar would still be more effective.

Grace: This week I carried on colour matching my fills! I am using Maimeri and Charbonnel oil paints diluted in Toluene.

On my first day of colour matching last week Manuel taught me the secret to good colour matching, which is- wait for it- building up layers! Yes, yes its the same when colour matching in ceramics or ethnography but its still a useful thing to bare in mind.

Teodora and Tatiana both gave me a new tip this week, which is more specific to this Project. I have to apply a layer of the adhesive Paraloid B72 diluted in Xylene (1:5) onto my colour matching in order to create the same shine and texture on my fills as the rest of the painting. I started to apply this layer of Paraloid B72 in Xylene this week and found that it could dissolve  my colour matching quite easily. Teodora and Tatiana both suggested that I experiment with mixing this adhesive in with the paint and solvent to achieve a thicker consistency, the correct shine and to make the retouching more resistant to the layer of Paraloid B72 and Xylene that I would apply on top of it.

At the end of Friday I thought that I might be ready to apply a final protective layer to my painting but after consulting Manuel he asked me why I had not retouched the white area on the right hand side of the palm tree. I explained that I had thought it was paint as  it had not been removed with the varnish and it had a similar texture to the surrounding areas. Manuel did not think that it made sense to apply this pale colour in such a dark area and said that it must be an abrasion that I should retouch.

We had a look under the microscope and found a substance that looked like some type of adhesive or varnish. We tested removing it with a scalpel and found it to be soft and easy to remove without scratching the green paint underneath.

 We decided to remove all of this substance in the same manner.

Manuel told me that now the larger fills had been retouched, the smaller areas of dirt and cracks stood out more and I should focus on retouching them in the following week.

This week we have also spent a morning working alongside Teodora, Henrique and Diego at the Estação , the other Pinacoteca, to prepare an exhibition for display. We had to label the back of a selection of frames with labels about the use of museum glass with anti-reflective and UV protection.

Cleaning a current exhibition at the Estação do Pinacoteca:

Last but not least – food and hygiene.

Apart from Valeria´s amazing packed lunches and dinners while she has been here, she has also brought us a massive pile of food to eat while she is away on her hoildays……………..