Author: Isabelle Vaudrey

Time is flying by, we can not believe how quickly our time here is going. Only three more weeks left on placement, then one further week when we travel a little bit, then back to England!

Our time at the museum is going to be split between cleaning the large bronze and rubber tube sculpture in the mornings and then working on our main projects in the afternoons.

This morning we carried on polishing up the heavily tarnish surface of the bronze strips. We are using metal polish on non-abrasive wipes then using a soft cloth to wipe away any residue. The results are great, very clean and shiny, but due to the size and shape it also quite hard to clean!

I think this is going to take quite a while to polish up completely, currently we are operating a random system of clean anywhere and then we will rotate the whole sculpture and repeat.

 

I had a bad moment when I first looked at the layer of agar agar I applied yesterday, as it had dried against the sculpture! I tried to peel it off and it started to remove some of the surface, I obviously stopped at once, but worked out that agar agar is made originally using water, so I wetted the agar, it softened it up and I was able to peel if off with out any more major problems. Phew!

 

I believe this has happened, not because of the mix or thickness I applied it. But because I put it in the fume cupboard, with extraction that sucked out all of the water from the agar, therefore drying it out! Even though the agar dried out so quickly it did remove some of the black mould that I was planning to remove originally, so it was a success!

I have also colour matched the areas where the agar removed the original surface

Grace has added texture to her fills using Modostuc, with a scalpel and a paint brush.

Teodora helped Grace with this, using a torch as raking light to show the texture of the original surface, a very clever simple trick!

 

And in other museum news, Grace went and got the coffee from the coffee ladies trolley…

…this a big deal because we can not speak Portuguese properly, so welcoming people when they buzz the door is quite tricky and the Brazilians love their coffee!

Tonight the hostel is busy, as always on a Friday, and currently outside our room there are two French men listening to the most random mix of music ever, from Led Zeppelin to Kanye West and also to make the French more stereotyped they are drinking red wine!

We have also made traditional Brazilian white beans tonight, they look good. I will make them for all my family and friends when I get home, I promise!

 

Jam update: the last of the strawberry and tangerine ( it tastes like caramelised marmalade, but slightly too caramelised) So tomorrow hopefully there will be a new jam. YAY!

Another normal day at the museum, friendly greetings to the security guards and then all of the staff, we are starting to perfect our Portuguese “good morning”…after three weeks!

We both set back to work on our pieces, Grace today has had a good day applying a layer of Paraloid B72 in Xylene 1:5 to the surface of her painting to create a layer in-between the original and her re-touching. She has also taken lots of very interesting raking light photographs to show the texture of the paint on the surface and researched into suitable paints for re-touching.

My day today started off by sewing the tie on my apron back off as yesterday I pulled it off! I then looked at my previous retouching on the thumb and decided to leave it as it is for the moment, I think I might add a pale terracotta colour coat over the top, but at the moment I am now sure. I have also started to colour match the previous restorations fill around the base of the sculpture.

I have also finished drilling the holes with a Dremmel for the armatures, in both the main sculpture and the hand. Yesterday one drill bit broke off within the hole and another was blunted by the hard ceramic body, even when I wetted it to make it softer the ceramic would not give way and allow for a deeper hole. But today I have succeeded after Manuel went and brought a new sharp drill bit!

Manuel has also come up with a mould removing solution, synthetic saliva! This is swabbed on with cotton wool to the surface and it removed the horrible black mould. Simple and effective. I am pleased now as it is starting to look like it did after I had originally cleaned it, lets hope for no more mould.

We have also been given another project to work on together, a large contemporary piece made from copper strips and rubber tubing. It forms a hammock shape and is around 5 meters long. It is going on loan to a museum in Rio and we have to clean and prepare it for exhibition as it has been in storage for five years.

 

These last few days have been so great for sweet food, Ana introduced us to peanut butter cubes, they are harder than normal jar peanut butter, but so very addictive and yummy! We are planning to bring lots home already. Then Pricilla brought in some super yummy chocolate Florentine type things, they are so good. I could eat them all day long, Brazilians certainly have a sweet tooth!

We also met Daphne, how works for the Pinacoteca’s educational programme, we are going to visit her and her colleagues soon and see what they get up too, this also means we will get to know more about the special interactive pictures Grace mentioned yesterday.

Today has been horrible and just like England, we will hope for some sun this weekend. Last night was very cold and tonight Gustavo (our hostel owner) gave us another blanket each, so tonight we will be lovely a warm.

Today was the day when all washing dreams came true, after breakfast and strawberry jam and a short taxi ride we arrived at the laundrette. A friendly assistant helped us load 5 loads (!)  into the machines and we watched them clean all of the last two weeks away. It was great, but took a long time and we missed a morning at the museum. But if we had not done our washing we would not have any clean clothes to wear for the rest of the week! Of course we checked with Teodora beforehand, who was absolutely fine with us doing this as I am not sure the museum would have not wanted the two English interns to turn up in dirty clothes for a week!

When we arrived back at the museum, everyone in the department was so very kind and all offered separately to wash our clothes in their machines for us, we can not thank them enough for their kindness and we will probably be taking them up on their kind offers.

Once all of the washing excitement had died down, we set back to work on our main projects.

Unfortunately though when I took off the cover of my sculpture it revealed this…

 

MOULD!

 

I think this has happened because of the water used within the organic agar, growing mould within the humid environment of Brazil and the labs, even though they are more controlled there is still a high humidity level that meant the water could evaporate properly.

So I tried a few things to remove the mould, a vacuum and soft toothbrush to remove the fluffy mould then a alcohol ethyl and water solution sprayed on and again brushed. This unfortunately did not remove the black mould on the surface, so tomorrow I am thinking of trying another layer of agar but using a solvent within it, one that Tatiana had recommended before to remove dirt and hopefully help to stop the mould growth.

Today I have also prepared the bamboo armatures to attach the hand with, by coating them in a layer of Paraloid B72 and Xilol 1:5 (or Xylene in English) to seal the sticks before they are put into the sculpture.

 

Grace today has carried on removing the retouching and discovered that there was more paint retouching than she originally thought, because of this she has stopped removing the existing retouches as they are not actually harming the painting. If she did remove all of the previous restoration, she would have to obviously retouch the missing areas, but she would not have enough original information to be able to recreate the image as it currently is.

 

Another task Grace completed today was to remove a fragment of newspaper from the middle top of the painting. She used a scalpel to slowly peel it away from the surface.

For supper this evening we had mushroom pasta, that was very tasty. The hostel is quite tonight just us, one girl and Emanuel our French friend.

It is also pouring down with rain and thundering, it is like we have never left England!

Goodnight Brazil, Good morning England, I hope everyone at home has a superb Tuesday.