Ellen: What we're looking at is a Sprite from
Frank Lloyd Wright's project Midway Gardens,
which was a sort of concert hall/beer garden
in Chicago.
It came to us in a really, really sad state.
Clearly, it's head is missing, that's the
most glaring damage.
But more pressing was the system of cracks
through its in section.
Every time you moved her, her top portion
would sort of wobble.
It was very scary, and she wasn't stable enough
for exhibition.
Ultimately, we discovered that the rebar was
bent, so we had to cut her in half, separate
the two pieces, and then rotate the top portion,
bring it down on the bottom half.
So looking at it now, it's back together,
and then there's this funny, like marshmallow
fluff material that we're using as our bulk
fill, the main filling component
which is more of that resin that we used to put the sculpture back together
but that's been bulked with glass micro-balloons which you see here.
These are very light little spheres made of glass which help bulk out the fill.
And then the idea of treatment was to…after
that fill is completed, we come out to the
surface, we would finish it off with a skin
of concrete mesh fill
using more of that acrylic resin, but this time bulked with actual concrete mortar
and more of these micro-balloons, and then into that we put sand to match the surface.
This is why I'm wearing a dust mask.
So this is the pigment that will color the
fill.
And then you try to get it around an eighth
of an inch or so thick.
And then you peel them apart, like that.
And you end up with a nice texture that grabs
the sand that we're going to be applying later.
So you just let that cook for a little while.
Jessica, do you wanna take it away?
Jessica: Yeah.
So, while that sets, I'm gonna trace out the
fill and I'll just put it down here.
And then I'm going to start to cut it out.
Basically, I'm just making little dots all
the way around, so that I can find my trace,
and then I would go back and actually cut
it out.
Now, it's just about connecting the dots.
So, to get the texture, we just use a little
bit of acetone, just to reactivate the surface,
and we just brush it on, and then add sand.
All right.
So I'm just coating the back with the same
adhesive that we used to make this.
A little sand helps to ease the transition.
Ellen: A final step would be to tone it with
some conservation colors.
Where the fill we're making for the whole
piece is the same color, more or less, the
same ingredients, but it's not going to match
everywhere because the sculpture isn't all
the same color everywhere
so we built in this final step of toning as
needed, the surrounding areas.
