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Maybe You Can Try this at Home:

A Virtual Tour of a Painting and Painted Textile Conservation Practice

with Nancy R. Pollak of Art Care Associates

Speaker: Nancy R Pollak, Conservator, Art Care Associates

Summary by Daniela González P., Graduate Fellow, SUNY Buffalo

On December 7th, the Washington Conservation Guild held a virtual tips and lessons-learned presentation by Nancy Pollak of Art Care Associates based on her 27 years in private practice.

Nancy, a trained paintings conservator, virtually presented members with a tour of her 280-square-foot at-home lab space in which she treats paintings on various supports and has completed projects as large as 12.5 feet in height. Nancy also specializes in treating painted textiles such as flags and banners.

Nancy’s at-home studio was established in 1996, starting in a semi-finished section of her basement. Although the space was functional, it required clients to enter through her home to reach the lab, and a lack of daylight also meant she had to move about her house for tasks that required natural light, such as inpainting.

After becoming established, Nancy moved her studio to a custom-designed space above her garage, providing natural light and a separate entrance to access the studio through two half-flights of steps via the garage.

The following four images show the studio space from different viewpoints. The top image shows the lab viewed from the north and connects to the house’s living spaces. The left image is viewed from the west, the right image is a view of the studio facing east, and the bottom image is the studio facing south.

For clients that have accessibility issues, a meeting on the first floor is set; however, the two half-flight stairs pose a size limitation on the projects that can be brought into the lab space. An attached balcony was built to assist with the transport of large-scale projects into the space but is not functional for that role and now serves as an area to decant solvents or for messier steps like sanding. Nancy recommends her 12-inch floor squares as they serve as a helpful tool in gauging the size of works and their squareness.

As Nancy’s private practice progressed, she acquired fixtures and equipment to assist her treatments. Due to the size of her space, all fixtures and equipment needed to be easily convertible, on wheels, and take up as little floor space as possible. Nancy’s main work table consists of two kitchen islands on wheels with an attached tabletop, while her other large work surface is made up of two crafting tables butted together and joined with a custom, two-piece laminated top. To keep her microscope available but out of the way, it is mounted to the wall with a custom folding wall support. Nancy’s most successful and creative idea is her 4” by 6” fold-up Murphy bed-style hot table. The table is hinged to the wall at the bottom and held in place at the top by latches. The hot table has legs that flip down when the table is in use and up when the table is folded up.

Nancy’s last pieces of notable furniture include her multi-purpose art storage units. The units are constructed of birch plywood and veneer. The compartments include three 3 small, 3 medium and two large shelves padded on the bottom. The storage units are framed by two black curtains held high by a rod, serving as the backdrop for image documentation. The curtains blend with the black painted photo easel while the camera stands and lights can be set up when needed.

Nancy’s clients consist mostly of private collectors and institutions. The paintings she treats consist of portraits and hobby paintings brought in pretreated or never treated. Painted textiles can range in various conditions, from intact, damaged, and in pieces. Nancy shared an example of a project that had been heavily overpainted and in which she revealed the original fingers of the seated woman. Most damaged works have tears created during moving accidents or flaking paint caused by delamination of the paint layers.

To better serve her clients, Nancy invites them for a free initial consultation to examine the work and discuss with the owner what can be completed to improve its condition. This allows Nancy and the client to be on the same page and for her to create an initial treatment proposal to present to the client. Along with having her clients bring in their artworks, Nancy also completes in situ projects such as residential murals, in which she completed her treatment steps with the client present throughout the day and provided additional background information to the client for them to understand during treatment stages.

Nancy shared some tool tips during her talk. Nancy uses easels from the brand Best Classic Dulce easel (online art store) in her practice because its parts are universal and well-built. For focused light, Nancy uses medical lights and a Ganaray SP-E-500B Essential bi-colored light, which can be adjusted for color and intensity. Since Nancy works on various oversized projects, she needed to develop a flexible support board system with different shapes and sizes. Nancy uses paper honeycomb boards covered with Tyvek and silicone release mylar or the release paper from BEVA film. However, caution must be taken when using heat tools because the honeycomb pattern can transfer to artworks; therefore, another work surface must be slipped below the object when using hot tools. Nacy’s go-to work surface material for large-scale projects is styrofoam insulation board seen in both green and blue, They are generally sold in 8’ x 4’ sheets and can be easily cut down for various sizes. To make a custom size, the boards are covered with framers tape on the edges and dowels are inserted into the edges to join panels together, then the seam is secured with packing tape. These foam boards offer a lot of flexibility and allow pins to be easily inserted, but unfortunately, they do not tolerate heat.

To hold these foam work surfaces upright, Nancy has created oversized custom easel forms using PVC pipe, which she calls her “tinker toys”. These are made of PVC pipe cut to standard lengths and assembled joints (t-joints, 90-degree elbows, and coupler connectors) to offer various configurations. For Nancy’s small space, it is imperative for her to have the ability to roll large paintings or textiles; Nancy has done this by repurposing a sono tube with foam boards supported by a PVC A-frame making it simple to support a painting around the tube and securing it through the tacking edges the top. When needing extra hands, Nancy uses weights, clamps and slings; her four go-to weights are white tiles with needle punch adhered to the back, countertop scraps with adhered felt backing, glass plates, and divers weights from the brand Sea Pearls.

To close her talk, Nancy shared several of her repurposed tools found in various stores, which included Jacquard refillable squeeze bottles with stainless steel tips for precise adhesive application. She has sourced Posh fabric at fabric stores, a tight-woven polyester-lining fabric useful for edge linings and tear mends for painted textiles. To remove keys from stretchers Nancy uses, Knipex Mechanics Dolphin Pliers found at your local hardware store. Xuron Corp. micro-shears are wonderful for removing tacks. Nancy shared through a colleague that she makes humidity chambers from clear-plastic organizer containers in which a hole is drilled at the bottom with a bolt that holds a piece of blotter paper in place with a nut. The blotter paper can be wet up with water or solvent and then placed upside down to serve as a vapor chamber with no drips. Beauty supply stores can be a great source for buying liter containers of pure acetone.