Conserving Carl Hall

The Salem Public Library has in its collection a beautiful Carl Hall painting called “Flood” of 1948.  It has had some definite conservation issues so Nancy and I agreed to take it to Portland to art conservator Nina Olsson.  First we arrived at the library and removed the painting, posting a note on the wall…

which Nancy had nicely provided…

and placed the painting carefully in the “art mobile” (not to be confused with the “bat mobile”)

and then took off for Portland to see Nina Olsson, art conservator.

We brought the painting in to Nina’s studio and she and Nancy began examining the painting’s condition…

while I began photographing the studio…

when I suddenly noticed that Nina’s hard working assistant was OLIVIA!

Olivia and Reva just graduated from Willamette last week and are important to us because they are terrific young women we care about (here they are at a farewell Art History dinner)

but they are the last two students that Roger really worked with at Willamette before retiring in 2010 (when both were sophomores)…Olivia is about to take off to NYC for a job…but today she was hard at work here in Portland…

Nina’s conservation studio is a studio in the really good and familiar sense of the word…

So we left “Flood” in her competent hands and went for lunch to the Jo Bar which has great food for sure (here is my beet nicoise)

but also has a couple of yummy Fay Jones paintings, and if I can be seated so as to gaze at one, then okay…and I got lucky on the lunch AND the painting…