CM: Yeah, and maybe we can talk a little bit about recognizing a damage to the drawing or fading condition issues? How does that result in repainting a wall drawing (inaudible) and --
John Hogan: The -- obviously, especially since often the work is up in -- long-term or in more public environments, things happen. It’s just -- it doesn’t even matter if it’s in a museum or not. I mean, it -- they just happen. I mean, because they are done directly on the wall, people often -- the audience often sort of can’t really believe that it’s there, so there’s a -- this weird desire to touch that’s really sort of out of proportion, comparatively speaking, to traditional artworks.
CM: Well, and I think they just make you want to step back and look at them and then get really close. (laughs)
John Hogan: Right, right, and get really close. And there’s, like, is that really drawn on the wall with a pencil? You know, that kind of thing. So, things do get damaged. And it’s one of these things where it’s a practical assessment. If something --
CM: Does the institution do that or --
John Hogan: Well, what we often say is if the piece gets damaged, contact the estate, send me photographs so we can sort of take a look. And we can say, oh, well, it’s only that section of the drawing that really has -- got messed up and maybe it can just be touched up. Often, we -- if there’s somebody who’s worked on the piece locally, we’ll say, oh, you know, so-and-so worked on the piece, they know how to do the touch-ups with the inks, just reach out to them. But sometimes, it’s considerably more damage and then we’ll say, well, you know, somebody from the studio needs to come and do, perhaps, just that section over of the piece. And then, sometimes it’s, like, well, it’s damaged. It’s not a repair that’s -- like, a scribble drawings, it’s -- they’re really hard to fix.
CM: (laughs) Yeah.
John Hogan: So, sometimes it does just simply require that the work, the entire work be redone. So, again, economic decisions. It depends on the extent of the damage, it depends on the type of -- the piece it is. You know, if it’s a glancing scratch from, you know, somebody walking by with a cart, you know, perhaps it can easily be touched up. If it’s a smudge in one of the pencil drawings, sometimes they can be cleaned up. But if it’s a dent in the wall, then it has to be plastered, it becomes different. You know, particularly to your -- the piece that you have in the collection, when it was installed the first time in his -- in Mr. Stern’s home, that wall was fairly fresh and a blister --
CM: Oh, wow.
John Hogan: -- occurred, shortly after the piece was finished. I mean, part of it is with the ink drawings, when you’re introducing an extraordinary amount of moisture to a wall surface -- it was that environment in Texas, it -- so, there were a lot of variables. It was a new building. And it was a blister but it just showed as a blister. It didn’t peel or anything like that. So, we simply -- I was there and, you know, put a pinhole in it, let the air out and injected, you know, matte medium into it so that it would stay adhered to the wall. That doesn’t mean -- you know, again, if a big chip of it -- if the blister had broken and it had been a section that had come off, then you got to -- you’re back to zero. You have to fill in the plaster, you have to prime it again, you have to do the whole section [to go?] -- sometimes it’s, like, well, the border -- you know, especially on pieces -- a lot of institutions have -- really don’t have baseboards, so there’s -- might be just a very small reveal at the bottom of the wall. So, people who clean the floors --
CM: Get really close.
John Hogan: -- you know, get a little too close or haven’t been trained properly how -- maybe to do it by hand instead of with the machine. So, sometimes, things get damaged at the bottom. It’s, like, well, it’s a border in black. Okay, we can fix it fairly easily. Or, now they really did it in and then it has to be redone. So, it -- again, it’s -- some things can easily be done by somebody who worked on it, some things can be done by somebody who’s a local conservator who has got a good skill. Sometimes, it -- and we have had occasions where pieces have been damaged and with good intention, the institution or collector has gone and hired a conservator at rather considerable expense, where if they would have contacted somebody from the studio, we would’ve had somebody who was a local artist fix it for not a lot, you know? Not a really serious economic issue. And it’s not that people have done it with, you know, poor intentions, it’s just -- they just assumed, well, we’ll have to hire a conservator because that’s the tradition that they know. And in some cases, it’s fine and in other cases it would’ve made just more sense for somebody who had worked on it to fix it and -- you know, as opposed to, like, some -- a conservator. Again, it’s about doing the proper research. A good conservator would -- if it was an ink drawing, they would understand, well, it’s -- the ink is done in these level three applications of these colors as opposed to I’m going to try to mix that purple. It’s, like, well, no, it’s just red and two coats of blue and it’ll be that purple. So, the -- there -- it --
CM: It’s different skills.
John Hogan: There’s different skills. But for the most part, people are responsible and do simply contact us and say, “We don’t know what to do,” and then we deal with it directly.
CM: And do all the drafters share their experiences amongst one another in terms of, [sort of, repairs?], or --
John Hogan: Yeah, we -- they try. I mean, everybody has their own proclivities but basically we try -- people are good at sharing skill groups. And for the most part, it’s a -- they all, at some point or another, have worked together. So, there is a social environment to that aspect of it, especially on bigger exhibitions. You know, you’d -- and for the most part, anybody who’s working who’s a lead drafter trained by somebody who was a lead drafter -- so, you have that working relationship to begin with. It’s not to say that they’re all, you know, good friends it’s just to say that they know each other and have spent time -- you know, you work for 22 days, six days a week, you have some kind of working relationship with those people. And they, you know, share skill groups and say, “Oh, well, you know, if you do it this way, it’ll be easier,” or “this way,” and then there are -- you know, some people are, like, “Well, this is the way I do it and I really don’t” -- you know, but that is -- you know, it’s a -- some people, it’s, like, “Well, I only use this kind of straight edge and I don’t like that kind of straight edge. That one gets too heavy for” -- and, you know, again, doesn’t matter as long as the intention is -- of Sol’s piece is respected and it gets executed within the parameters that are expected.