Week Thirteen

This week I worked with The Sower and once again with the Emily Fountain. The Winter Park Paint Out is happening soon and the most prevalent of the sculptures needed a touch up to really make their patinas shine for the myriad of guests that will be visiting over the next couple of weeks. The Sower is meant to represent Jesus as a "sower" of teachings and falls in line with Albin's religiosity that is expressed in various sculptures on the premise. The casting was already in great shape before I cleaned and waxed it, and now it looks even better. The Emily Fountain, being the centerpiece of the courtyard, also received a cleaning and waxing to really bring out the splendor of the work. The work on the Emily Fountain will also be the last of my work with the sculptures for the remainder of the internship as I'll be shifting my focus towards the accession and deaccession process with the Holy Art of Imperial Russia collection that we have at the museum. Following that, I will be assisting Rachel with the Winter Park Paint Out and that will round out my internship.

Week Twelve

This week I worked with the Forest Idyl and Mother sculptures. Forest Idyl is positioned right outside the main courtyard and is inspired by the Song of Hiawatha. Its a quaint sculpture of a woman holding a doe while a mother deer is next to them and tending to her offspring. The sculptures itself is quite intricate; cleaning and waxing it took more time and attention than I had anticipated but the work was worth it as it looks much better now.

Mother is positioned on the periphery of the premise right on Osceola Drive and is a sculpture of a mother with a child standing next to her and a baby cradled in her left arm. This has actually proven to be the most challenging of the sculptures simply due to its sheer size. Its probably the largest of the sculptures on site and took more time and wax than any of the other works to tend to.

Week Eleven

This week I've continued my work with the PastPerfect catalogue and developing the backgrounds for each of the sculptures. Sherwood has more to say about some works than others and this diminishes the reports I can create, however, the corresponding catalogue provided by Rachel has been helpful in creating links and digging up information that may be lacking in the book. The museum's physical catalogue is a trove of information about Polasek and his work, and a good portion of it remains un-digitized, which requires that I physically seek out the information. Although somewhat of a burden, it also has reinforced my research skills that I've developed throughout my undergraduate career and has taught me how to more efficiently parse for the pertinent information.

In terms of work with the statues, this week I tackled the Man Reaching for the Moon. Polasek was inspired by the ambitions of space travel in the early 60's and dedicated the piece to those cultural and scientific movement that was occurring. The statue itself was in a somewhat poor condition; various calcium deposits had formed and the patina had faded and become dull. I washed the statue and then applied a wax coat, but this specific piece required greater attention due to its immediate presence upon entering the premises and its size. It took a day of work on this specific statue but it was worth it to make it look as nice as it currently does. This was also another instance of having to work with an immense piece of art, much like The Risen Christ, and again I learned about how to manage issues of verticality when working with the sculptures.

Week Ten

All is going well at the museum. I've continued working with the statues and making sure they're looking as nice as possible for the upcoming events the museum has planned. In addition to the maintenance of the statues I've begun to fill out the PastPerfect records with greater details and have tried to include the origins and stories of each of the sculptures. For this I used Ruth Sherwood's biography of Albin Polasek, Carving His Own Destiny. The book has provided some wonderful background for the inspiration of the artwork as well as the context in which they were thought of. As for the statues I worked with, this week I dedicated my time to making sure that the Risen Christ look as good as possible. The statue is quite tall which made the process a little more intricate than other pieces I've worked on, but overall it was a good learning experience and taught me about the vertical challenges that some curators may face in their time.

Week Nine

Spring Break! I hope the statues are doing well without me...

Week Eight

Due to some transportation issues (i.e. my car breaking down)  I was unable to work on the statues during the week, however, I managed to fix the issue by the time of our Maslenitsa celebration here at the museum! It went very well, everyone had a great time learning about the holiday and certainly they all enjoyed the bliny Rachel made. Overall the celebration was a hit, we had somewhere around 200 unique visitors who were very receptive to the presentations (troika dancers and Russian holy art lecture) and activity stations (bliny, lady maslenitsa doll assembly, etc.). I think our visitors leaned a lot about Russian culture on that day, and the Russians present were great about discussing their cultures which allowed me to learn even more about the holiday and its significance.

Week Seven

This week I continued working with the sculptures. First was the Pilgrim at the Gates, one of my favorite sculptures we have at the Gardens. It depicts an ascetic pilgrim knocking at the gates of what would presumably be heaven. The size of the sculpture alone is impressive but after detailing it and waxing the piece, I really came to appreciate the attention to detail Polasek paid to his work. The garment the pilgrim wears around his waist moves in an almost lifelike fashion and his solemn expression conveys a distinct feeling of resolution. Up next was the bronze casting of Pan, the mythological Greek god. The statue is in fair condition but the weather has certainly degraded the quality of the bronze over time and a new wax coat in addition to scrubbing off dirt and scum was needed.