By By JONATHAN CLAYBORNE
Staff Writer
Call it a demonstration of the power of new media.
A Washington Daily News series about a local artist’s efforts to restore paintings housed in the Beaufort County Courthouse has generated an unprecedented number of comments on the newspaper’s Web site.
The articles also have inspired e-mails to the newspaper and entries in its Sound Off column.
The series, authored by Lifestyles &Features Editor Kevin Scott Cutler, highlights the restoration of the paintings, which depict historical figures in the history of regional justice.
The portraits are being restored by Washington artist Nancy Scoble.
Clerk of Court Marty Paramore hired Scoble to restore five paintings that had been stored in a closet under the stairs in the courthouse’s lobby.
The paintings, long tucked away, were discovered among janitorial supplies in the closet, said Paramore, who said he wanted to save the art in a manner the county could afford.
“I had no idea it would get the sort of reaction it’s got,” he said.
Posted online at www.wdnweb.com, the series drew criticism from some members of the art-restoration community, and support from people who approved of using a local artist to perform the work.
“We haven’t had a single complaint, locally, from anyone who’s seen this work,” said County Manager Paul Spruill.
According to Paramore, the criticism began with the publication of the first installment in the series.
“And I think there were a lot of assumptions made about the local artist,” he said.
Taken together, the comments outnumbered those for all other local stories posted on the site since 2003, according to the Daily News’ management.
A link to the first article in the three-part series apparently was posted to a conservators’ chat room by Amber Kerr-Allison, a paintings conservator with the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Lunder Conservation Center, in Washington, D.C., said Perry Hurt, associate conservator with the N.C. Museum of Art in Raleigh.
A call to Kerr-Allison wasn’t returned.
That first article prompted concern within the restoration community, said Hurt, who visited the chat room and read the WDN report online.
“As a field, we are a small number of people, and we are expected to get a great deal of education and experience before we’re allowed to touch things, so to speak,” Hurt said in an interview.
Most of the conservators’ replies were not intended as personal criticism of Scoble, Hurt said.
The article tapped into “this well of frustration” within the restoration community, he said.
That frustration was echoed by David Goist, an independent conservator of paintings and a member of the American Institute for Conservation.
In separate telephone interviews, Hurt and Goist indicated that most professional art conservators receive intensive, graduate-level training in their craft, and generally keep themselves separate from artists.
According to both men, the restorer’s job is to do his or her work without compromising the artist’s original intent.
Speaking of Scoble’s methods, Goist commented, “They may be perfectly fine. But I have to say, as a full-time conservator of paintings, it’s a full-time job to stay up with advancements in the profession.”
For her part, Scoble apparently was blindsided by the controversy.
“It’s a small town and our history’s important,” she said.
Scoble, a local art teacher, said she took a private art-restoration course with a teacher in Boca Raton, Fla., in 1996.
She said the restoration methods she uses are outlined in art publications, and that all of her work is done “under true archival process.”
“Everything is reversible,” she added.
Scoble said her touch-ups are done in watercolors, which are easily removed.
“And I never use acrylic,” she said.
She uses wax to fill in rips and tears on canvas, and the wax also can be removed, Scoble continued.
She said her goal is to clean, reveal and preserve the image as the artist intended it, with a focus on the figures in the foreground. She does little to nothing to the backgrounds of portraits.
She also documents her work step by step with photography, saving the resulting images on CD.
“I think it adds value to the piece for the next generation,” she said.
Scoble has a photo album full of examples of her past restoration work.
Speaking of the courthouse paintings, she stated, “They’re much safer being up on a wall.”
In a later posting on the Daily News’ Web site, Hurt apologized “for any disrespect” Scoble might have perceived in the online comments.
“While I don’t agree with some of the critical comments in response to the conservators, I do understand the sentiment to ‘stay out of your backyard,’” he wrote.
Hurt said he has offered to meet with Scoble and anyone else who is concerned about the issue.
“I want to make it clear that, in my view, it’s not a personal attack,” he told the Daily News. “It’s a larger issue that these conservators were trying to address, in a good way or not a good way in some respects.”
Funds for the restoration project were allocated by the Beaufort County commissioners, who voted unanimously on July 7, 2008, to set aside an amount “not to exceed $3,000.”
“Said portraits are to be repaired by a local artist,” read the minutes of that meeting.
Scoble’s estimate for the restoration was $2,800, Paramore said.
A nonbinding estimate from a professional conservator ranged from $12,500 to $17,500, with a possible fundraising goal of $15,000, Paramore related.
Two of the restored paintings now hang in the room where Superior Court cases are heard. Scoble continues the restoration of the three other pieces.