Preservation Technology Podcasts (U.S. National Park Service)

Episodes

June 6, 2014

52. National Mall Plan Project Part 1 (Episode 52)

Transcript

Susan Spain, NPS landscape architect and Project Executive for the National Mall Plan. Susan Spain, NPS landscape architect and Project Executive for the National Mall Plan.Photo Credit: http://www.olmsted.org/events/frederick-law-olmsted-jr-symposia/background-information

Kevin: Welcome to the Preservation Technology Podcast – the show that brings you the people and projects that are advancing the future of America’s heritage. I’m Kevin Ammons with the National Park Service’s National Center for Preservation Technology & Training. Today we join NCPTT’s Paul Cady as he speaks with Susan Spain, the National Mall Plan Project Executive and a landscape architect with the National Park Service for more than twenty-four years. In the first of this three part series, they’ll talk about the design of the National Mall turf renovation project.

Paul: Susan, could you describe your role in the design of the project and give a brief history of how it came about?

Susan: My role was to be the lead planner for the National Mall plan. This is an award winning, 800 page EIS [Environmental Impact Statement], that talked about how we’re going to manage the National Mall in the future. The Mall is the component part of the National Mall which contains also the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and so on. It’s about 750 acres overall. The Mall is a portion of that area and it’s the area directly west of the capitol and it’s surrounded on both the north and the south sides by the museums of the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian Institution as well as the headquarters for the USDA [United States Department of Agriculture].

Paul: What were the design goals the project?

Proposed plan for the National Mall, from the National Mall Plan: Summary, Fall 2010. Proposed plan for the National Mall, from the National Mall Plan: Summary, Fall 2010.

Susan: Well clearly sustainability. We wanted to make sure that we could have a sustainable space. The Mall, and the National Mall, were never designed for the types and levels of use that they receive. For example, the Mall area between the museums held about 800 days of special events annually. It was never designed for that type of use, it was never designed for the level of use, and when we started planning, at this point in time, we had conditions that were unacceptable to virtually everyone. The soil was incredibly compacted (a soil scientist from Penn State University broke his probe the first time he tried to stick it in the ground), our soil conditions were like a concrete block and we didn’t have anything that was sustainable. Our irrigation system was broken; basically we looked pretty bedraggled.

Paul: Since it is such a visible project, with all the museums and other things around, how much input did the public have in the design process?

Susan: We had about 30,000 public comments during the National Mall plan time. The most common comment in our first round of public comments was ‘this doesn’t look good enough for what it means to our nation.’ People would tell us this was our nation’s front yard, or our nation’s stage, and they wanted to be proud of the way it looked and they didn’t feel like they could be.

Paul: What was the process for receiving input from the public?

Susan: We had a dedicated website and we were using the Park Service’s link, cross link to the Park Service’s PEPC [Planning Environment and Public Comment] site which is a internet way to submit comments. We also had a number of public meetings and we had fax comments, we had email comments, that came in to us. But you know, our process was a four year process to complete planning.

Paul: Do you use other examples of historic landscapes to help you with the design process?

Susan: Before we even started planning we undertook two Best Practices Studies. One of the Best Practices Studies was about local historic designed landscapes in the Washington DC area (PDF, 4.3MB). We had identified 7 historic landscapes and how they were managed to maintain high levels of high quality conditions. These could be things like American University, Georgetown University, [The Washington] National Cathedral, Architect of the Capitol grounds, the capitol grounds, so to speak, the National Gallery of Art and so on. We were looking at what techniques could they use to make sure that their landscapes were in good condition. We learned a great deal from that; it’s always desirable, for example, if you can close off an area (that’s not an option for us on the National Mall) or if you can restrict the types of use (which is also not an option for us). The second Best Practices Study we did was looking at heavily used urban parks around the nation, and around the world (PDF, 3.7MB). We looked at four urban parks in the United States: Central Park, Piedmont Park in Atlanta, Golden Gate Park and Millennium Park in Chicago, Golden Gate Park was in San Francisco. And then we looked at international landscapes in London, in Canada, and in Canberra, Australia. We looked at the national capitol because we were looking at places that had the right to protest, and what were things that they did in order to maintain their landscapes. It was very clear, probably early on, that no one had the level/demand that we did on the National Mall and in most cases, when you have gathering space for your nation, they are on hard surface spaces. It certainly rammed forth the challenge we faced in planning a sustainable future for designed historic landscapes within the National Mall.

Paul: How does the turf project fit into the greater Mall design project?

Susan: We had identified, right off the bat that this was probably one of the most degraded historic landscapes that we had. We had identified that we needed to restore the soils. We wanted to meet the sustainable SITES initiative. We needed to reduce the amount of potable water that we were putting on any place, because if we would have had an irrigation system that worked we would have been using potable water on that irrigation system. We had mostly gooseweed out there (as opposed to a healthy turf) and so we had the goals of really restoring our health of the turf, and the trees, and being able to still manage high levels of use in the area. That’s putting incredible demands on a turf situation.

Paul: How did you balance designing for the public while also the maintenance needs of the NPS?

Susan: We had identified, right off the bat, that to be sustainable it had to be maintainable. We knew that we needed to then make changes in the way that we managed events in the area. Basically we’re telling our events planners that they have to do things differently: they have to be in different areas, they cannot be on the turf as long as they were on the turf before, they may be required to use turf covers. We would like to disperse our events throughout the year and reduce the impact on the turf area.

Paul: So with these new restrictions in place has there been any positive or negative response?

Susan: There has been a huge positive response. For example, the first event we had after we finished phase one of the turf project was the last presidential inaugural activities. We had just finished the turf project in early January and this is taking place just two weeks later. Using turf covers, and having limitations on the amount of time the turf covers could be down, we came up with a situation where we took the turf covers off and everything, while there were a few dents for awhile, the turf looked fabulous. At this point in time, midsummer, it still looks very healthy and good.

Paul: So what other kinds of sustainable features were you designing into the fabric of the Mall to make it more sustainable?

Susan: We wanted to make sure that we would have a soil system that would be resilient; we did not have soils that were resilient. One of the things that were a result of that was that you would have increased runoff and storm water generation that could lead to some localized flooding. We wanted to be able to have soils that water could penetrate, as opposed to runoff from. We wanted to have turf that was as durable as possible, a mix of turf that would be as durable as possible, and we wanted to make sure that our irrigation system was placed deep enough so that tent stakes didn’t penetrate. That was one of the problems we had had in the irrigation system, but it was starting to look like, it had been punctured so many times that it couldn’t be used.

Paul: So how far along is the project?

Susan: We have completed phase 1 of the project. There’s phase 2 and phase 3 coming, and then adjacent to that will be replacement of gravel walks with another kind of paving. We’ve yet to determine exactly what that paving will be, but we wanted to make sure that we were putting infrastructure in the paving that would encourage people to be using larger paved areas for placement of tents and stages and things like that that have been typically placed on the grass at this point in time. It’s been interesting to see that the people were happy to utilize walkways to put the stages or tents on. We saw that in the new area last week, during the 4th of July, there were first amendment demonstrations up on the area between 3rd and 7th, very successfully using the paved areas.

Paul: What is phase 1?

Susan: Phase 1 was three panels of grass, and they were center panels on the National Mall. The National Mall, just as a reminder, is an area that has five panels that are filled with American elm trees and they are on a grid system (I think about 50ft on center) so it is a lawn framed by panels with elm trees. And it is probably the most historically recognizable landscape in our nation because at one end of the Mall is the Washington Monument at the other end of the Mall is the United States Capitol Building. It has these iconic symbols of our nation that are highly visible, which is what makes it so desirable for first amendment demonstrations and for a variety of activities: they want to be placed between the symbols of our nation.

Paul: When will phase 2 and phase 3 be implemented?

Susan: Phase 2 and phase 3 are under design at this point in time. I think we expect them to be under construction in 2015.

Paul: Ok, well thank you very much. Is there anything else you’d like to add about the design of this project?

Susan: I think that it looks so simple that people don’t realize that it’s a fairly complex system. We had taken a group of people from the Architect of the Capitol’s office up there last week and they were just astounded. While something looks simple, and they had helped us by taking photos during the construction period, they were impressed with the state of the art facilities that come from this project. We really planned on, and wanted to capture and reuse, rainwater; the rainwater was going to be reused to irrigate the turf. The system to do this is what impressed the staff from the Architect of the Capitol’s office, the sense of a real state of the art system that was doing cutting edge work in terms of reuse of water and reduction and the use of potable water.

Paul: Alright, well thank you very much for talking to me Susan, I really appreciate it.

Susan: No problem, thank you.

Kevin: That was Paul Cady’s conversation with Susan Spain. You can find the transcript of this interview on our website. That’s ncptt.nps.gov. Until next time…

Today we join NCPTT's Paul Cady as he speaks with Susan Spain, the National Mall Plan Project Executive and a landscape architect with the National Park Service for more than twenty-four years. In the first of this three part series, they'll talk about the design of the National Mall turf renovation project.

May 28, 2014

51. Historic Preservation Program at Mississippi College (Episode 51)

Transcript

Ammons: Welcome to the preservation technology podcast, the show that brings you the people and projects that are advancing the future of America’s heritage. I’m Kevin Ammons with the National Park Services’ National Center for Preservation Technology and Training. Today we join NCPTT’s Jason Church as he speaks with Tricia Nelson, Director of the Mississippi College Historic Preservation Program.

SAM_0643Church: And hello, this is Jason Church, Materials Conservator for the National Park Services’ National Center for Preservation Technology and Training, and I’m here today talking to Tricia Nelson, the Director of the Mississippi College Historic Preservation Program and we just finished up the International Cemetery Preservation Summit here in Niagara Falls where you had a poster about the school’s program. Tell us a little bit about the degree and the program and what your students are doing.

Nelson: Okay. Well in the fall of 2010, Mississippi College began offering a minor in Historic Preservation. It’s taught within the history and political science department. We do offer introductory classes such as Architectural History, Conservation, and Research and Documentation and then about a year ago we did offer a Historic Cemeteries course.

Church: Okay and you teach in this program and you had a lot to do with the cemetery course. Tell us a little bit about that.

Nelson: The cemetery course was unique in that we were able to use a local cemetery, Clinton Cemetery, to do a lot of our work. We were able to document stones, study materials, and successfully conserve parts of the cemetery. Some of these projects included repair of the iron fencing and we were also able to use the D2 to clean biological growth and so the students were able to see before and after and it was very successful. We were also able to partner with historic Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson, Mississippi, established in 1823. It’s the final resting place for six Confederate generals, seven governors, fourteen mayors and a host of other prominent citizens such as famous writer Eudora Welty. The students were able to help with Greenwood. There had been a recent vandalism of the cemetery and so many of the urns were removed from their grave markers, so the students were able to help walk around and locate those urns and try to match those with their markers, flagging various areas that needed special attention because of advanced vandalism. We were able to help with a couple of cemeteries there and the students really did learn a lot.

Church: Now how much do the students juggle the actual in-the-field work versus their classroom work when they’re in the program?

Nelson: Well we do a combination of lecture and fieldwork. In lecturing, I taught them about various historic cemeteries. The types of cemeteries we did study iconography and various things like that. We then went into conservation and then once we talked about those areas, we then went out to the cemetery and did some fieldwork.

Church: Now the cemetery class, is this is something you’re going to repeat on a regular basis?

Nelson: It was successful but it was a limited number of students so it just depends on how much marketing we can do and because it’s an elective course, it’s not required. It really does take more marketing but again, it was successful for the cemeteries and it was a way for us to help those entities so I would like to offer it again in the future.

Church: How many students typically are in one of the classes?

Nelson: We do have small classes at Mississippi College. We are a private, Christian institution so that is how we market ourselves. So that particular class had about eight or nine students in it, and I think that’s a wonderful course size because you can really work with the students and really get that one on one with them. So it’s not too large and a wonderful opportunity.

Church: Now you mentioned this is an elective. For the corps people doing this program, what are their backgrounds?SAM_0678

Nelson: These are usually history majors. Again, we do have some minoring in historic preservation program. I do hope to develop a master’s program and some of the art students have been interested in our courses as well. So we do get some of those type students.

Church: Now the program is fairly young, what are the students who are coming through this program hoping to do professionally once they leave?

Nelson: That’s questionable. I don’t know and I don’t know that they really know sometimes but what I try to do is give them a good background in preservation. I try to educate them in a lot of the different opportunities for a history degree that may be in preservation, a lot of the conservation type options, research type options. I feel that in teaching them about cemeteries, we’re opening up a whole new avenue that they probably never even realized was available. So there’s so many things we know they can do with this preservation degree, and so I think just educating them about those opportunities is one of the biggest things that we can do.

Church: If you live in the state of Mississippi and you have a cemetery or another historic site and you’re interested in working with the university, is that something you guys are open to if people wanted to contact you to maybe come to their site to do projects with students?

Nelson: Oh yes, that would be wonderful. That would give us the hands on opportunity to be able to go out and do fieldwork and I think it’s a win-win situation because in Mississippi we have so many resources, historic structures, and cemeteries that are in need of help. I mean this is one of the reasons why we began this program because there is no other program in the state. So, if we can partner with these entities to provide some conservation, documentation and things such as that, I think that that’s again just a win-win situation.

Church: So you’ve told us a bit about the cemetery class and the projects you’ve done in Jackson, what other projects are the students doing in the program?

Nelson: We have had other projects going on. One thing that we did was we offered a ten day tour of Virginia, Washington DC, and some other areas to the students and we were able to gain firsthand knowledge of our country’s heritage. We toured a lot of historic sites such as Mt. Vernon, Monticello, Montpelier. We also tied it in to the civil war battlefields and also revolutionary sites and so the students were able to see historic sites and also some dealing with historic preservation. Then the next year we took them to Pennsylvania and Maryland and we were able to see additional historic sites. So we’ve had some wonderful opportunities to travel with the students and give them that first-hand knowledge that I think that all history students and historic preservation students should have. Also in April of 2013, our Historic Preservation program received an award for excellence in the use of historic records in higher education because we are so adamant on research; this was awarded by the Historical Records Advisory Board. Because we are an institution of higher learning we were able to apply for that award and we did receive that. So we’re very proud of that.

Church: What kind of research are the students doing?

SAM_4858Nelson: Well part of the program is, as I mentioned earlier, research and documentation and one of those courses I actually teach students how to do a nomination for the National Register and so we get them into the archives. Fortunately the archives are right there in Jackson so we’re able to get them over to that and show them how to do the research and the documentation for that and so we’ve been able to document some of our historic resources in the area, which has been wonderful. People that we help are also so grateful because sometimes they have no idea where to start. And so I think that because we are able to do actual projects, they actually can learn so much more with that hands-on work that they do.

Church: So if a student, even a high school student or current college student is interested in this program at Mississippi College, who should they contact, how should they go about that?

Nelson: They can contact me, Tricia Nelson. My email address is tnelson@mc.edu or you can call us at 601-925-3221.

Church: Very good. Hopefully we’ll hear more from your students. Maybe one day we’ll be doing a podcast with some of the students and the projects they’re doing and watching them go out hopefully all over Mississippi and increase preservation awareness within the state and the country. We really appreciate you talking to us.

Nelson: Great. Thank you.

Ammons: Thank you for listening to today’s show. If you would like more information check out our podcast show notes at ncptt.nps.gov. Until next time, good bye.

Today we join NCPTT's Jason Church as he speaks with Tricia Nelson, Director of the Mississippi College Historic Preservation Program.

May 7, 2014

50. FBI and Art Crime: William Toye and Clementine Hunter (Episode 50)

Transcript

Church: This is Jason Church of the National Park Service’s National Center for Preservation Technology and Training, and today I’m here talking with Special Agent Randy Deaton of the FBI.

Church: Now Randy, I know you were involved in a pretty major case recently with the Toyes being forgers of Clementine Hunter artwork. Can you tell us a little bit about that case and what your role was in it?

Deaton: I was a lead investigator on this particular case. It involved three main subjects that were ultimately successfully prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced for selling and creating forged works that were Clementine Hunter, the folk artist, forgeries. It was a case that involved a conspiracy amongst three people, a lot of victims, a large loss amount, spanned the country and it basically involved an art forger that had at least a forty year career forging art.

Church: Then not only were they forging art, what else were they forging?

Deaton: In addition to the actual works of art, part of the case was also a large amount of forged or fraudulent letters of provenance that was associated with other art work, other fine art forgeries and also with Clementine Hunter forgeries.

Church: What made this particular case, what made this crime worth pursuing as an FBI agent?

Deaton: Basically again, you had a conspiracy, multiple people involved; you had a lot of victims over a long period of time, at least since the early 1970’s. You had a forty plus year career forger that was creating and getting works out into the public that were forgeries and you had victims that did not receive justice for crimes that they were victims of since the early 1970’s and you had a historical significance to this case.

Clementine Hunter, if not the most well-known artist to ever come out of Louisiana, she was a folk artist that would not be considered a fine artist, but you know, it was significant and had a significant historical aspect to it, and we helped preserve her legacy and Louisiana’s art culture.

Church: Now I’ve heard people say that art crime is victimless, that art crime is not a real crime, there’s no death involved, it’s just a rich people losing money sort of thing. As an investigator, what do you think about art crime? What were the stakes in this case?

Deaton: I think by definition, in order for something to be a crime, you have to have a victim. Whether someone may not be a victim of a monetary loss, it could be an actual physical loss like murder, but in this particular case you had some very good people that believed they were buying original pieces of art that was created by the artist, Clementine Hunter. They were told various stories to support the sales of these paintings, and we had victims that were some well-to-do, some not well-to-do normal people, all good people that don’t deserve to be victims of crime just like no one deserves to be a victim of a crime. I think some victims in this case were destitute after they learned they had forgeries but still they deserve justice just like anyone else.

Church: As far as art crime goes, was this case any different? What made this case a little bit special?

Deaton: This case was unique in a number of aspects to include, you had an art forger with at least a forty year career in forging art and this involved folk art, not what the public knows as fine art, Renoir, Matisse, Gauguin, you know this involved a Louisiana folk artist. You had a large, large number of forgeries involved in this case and you had a number of private laboratories that the US government had consulted with and contracted with in order to do forensic work that the FBI lab just couldn’t do and all of it in support of a prosecution in this case.

Church: Now the sentencing itself, how was that a little bit different?

Deaton: In what aspect?

Church: That the Toyes had …

Deaton: All three defendants were ordered to pay restitution, a large amount of restitution, and all of this is public record also. What I thought was unique about the case is that the federal judge presiding over the case and the sentencing, ordered Mr. and Mrs. Toye to assist in the identification and cataloging of forgeries created by Mr. William Toye to include some victims wanted their forgeries to be signed by Mr. Toye, which did occur.

Church: Of the ones that were catalogued, what’s the numbers on this case that you know of?

Deaton: There’s no way anyone can say a specific exact number of Clementine Hunter forgeries created by Mr. Toye. That number is just not known, the exact number to be 100% certain, but there were over two hundred forgeries that were involved in this case that were ultimately identified.

Church: Now if you’re a listener and you have a Clementine Hunter, maybe you bought it from Robbie Lucky, maybe you didn’t, if you think you have a forgery, what should you do? What’s the next step as an art collector who might have a forgery?

Deaton: Well if you bought it from Mr. Toye or Mr. Lucky, then I would certainly be suspect of what I bought. Go to someone that or find out, an appraiser maybe or an authenticator. And just generally speaking of art in general, you want to consult with people and talk to people and have various people that have a lot of experience looking at certain pieces of art and get their opinion and ultimately whether you have a forgery or you have a real painting by a certain artist, it’s all a matter of taste for the owner. You may like the forgery better than you do the original; it’s all in the person who owns the painting. But I would also say if you have any information about art forgery or someone committing these types of crimes, you can always call the FBI.

Church: Just out of curiosity, I know the Toyes have been involved in forgeries of Matisse, Gaugin, Degas and things like that, do you have any idea what might have switched them to start doing an outsider artist , doing this self-taught artist from Louisiana. What might have switched them from the impressionists?

Deaton: Yeah, I think at the time, from the investigation looking at everything, when Mr. Toye was arrested by the New Orleans Police Department in early 1970’s, at that time there was a big show of Clementine Hunter’s works that was going on at the time. There was a surge in popularity for her paintings. I don’t know for certain. That could have caused that group of forgeries to come out then. In this particular case, late 1990’s, early 2000, this new group of Toye Clementine forgeries started coming out, maybe there was something going on at that time that would have meant a surge in popularity for Clementine Hunter that made it more valuable to some people, more collectible at the time. Who knows? Who knows?

Church: So we know the Toyes were forging a variety. Now they’ve been prosecuted for the Clementine’s. We assume of course that’s the end of their forging career. Was there any movement to go back and look at past crimes? Is there any restitution on art crime? I mean any statute of limitation on art crime?

Deaton: Well there’s no federal law like an art crime law. In this particular case, you had conspiracy charges and mail and wire fraud charges and there are statutes of limitations on those. So if you were a victim of wire fraud in 1970, the federal statute of limitations has run out years ago. So somebody can’t be prosecuted for that per se. A lot of the fine art forgeries that were linked to Mr. Toye and Mrs. Toye, that’s conduct that was never prosecuted so at this point it’s just an allegation. They were never prosecuted for that. Thank God we live in a country where everybody’s innocent until proven guilty.

Church: Anything else you want to add to this case?

Deaton: It was a very challenging case, involved a lot of good people, a lot of victims in this case and really good people. It was a pleasure to meet with them under not so well circumstances but I think what made this case was the honesty, the professionalism, and the cooperation that the victims put forth, not the investigators, not the prosecutors, not the scientists, but the victims in this case that chose to cooperate with the US government. They’re pretty much the heroes in the case. I can write reports all day and go interview people, but ultimately it would have been them that went to court had we gone to trial and told their story. So you’ve got a case driven by victims and there’s four victims, to give them justice even if it was from forty years ago.

Church: Well Agent Deaton we really appreciate your coming and talking to us today. Hopefully we don’t have to talk to you in the future about more art crimes. But I think we know that you’re always available if we have any questions and if we run across anything ourselves that we can contact you.

Deaton: And again, if the public has information about art crime occurring, call your local FBI office no matter where you are.

Church: Alright. Thank you.

Jason Church speaks with FBI Special Agent Randy Deaton about his lead in the William Toye Forgery case of Clementine Hunter.

January 8, 2014

49. What do you do with a broken Orangutan? (Episode 49)

Transcript

Ammons: Welcome to the Preservation Technology Podcast. The show that brings you the people and projects that are advancing the future of America’s Heritage. I’m Kevin Ammons with the National Park Service’s National Center for Preservation Technology and Training. In this podcast we join NCPTT’s Jason Church as he speaks with conservator Fran Ritchie about her work with taxidermy collections. Fran is a former NCPTT intern in the Archeology and Collections Program.

Church: So I’m here today with Fran Richie and Fran you were a former intern at NCPTT so we are sort of catching up with you finding out what you did back then and what your are doing these days.

Ritchie: Thanks. Well it’s great to talk to you. I was at the NCPTT for the summer of 2005. Which it’s hard to believe it’s been that long. I worked with Dr. David Morgan in his first summer having an intern in the Archaeology and Collections dept. We kind of did a bunch of different projects as we were figuring out what it meant to have an intern. One of the more significant things for me was learning how to use GPS and GIS and then basically just learning what the National Park Service does and what the NCPTT does. And that’s been really beneficial for me, being in the field of conservation, to know what kind of research you guys provide.

Church: And so what are you doing these days?

Ritchie: Well, I’m completing my masters in art conservation from Buffalo State College. I’m in my 3rd year. That means I am off for a kind of apprentice ship for the full year at the Harvard Peabody Museum where I’m working on organic objects; things from our coastal Alaskan collection. Which has been really exciting and really fun and we’ve been collaborating with people from Alaska on our treatments and materials.

Church: I know I’ve seen a recent ANAGPIC presentation that you did and you’ve also been working on other types of collections as well.

Ritchie: I have yes. I’ve tapped into my experiences in the south and I’ve cultivated a love of taxidermy. I’m hoping to become a taxidermy conservator so I’ve been presenting on a project I did as part of my Grad program; conserving a broken taxidermy orangutan from the Buffalo Museum of Science. Which has been very enriching and it’s definitely been an ice breaker for people.

Church: So exactly what do you do to a broken orangutan?

Ritchie: Well that one was very interesting because there were modern materials added to a traditional taxidermy mount. So the amateur – well I think he was an amateur based on my research and looking at other taxidermy specimens. This taxidermist replaced the palms of the hands and the pads of the feet with latex rubber. He just nailed the specimen to a heavy piece of driftwood back in 1966. Over time that rubber has degraded like it does and it pulled away. The specimen has pulled away from the mount and it ripped all the hands and the feet to shreds basically. I even had to recover finger fragments that were left on the wood – nailed there. So I just recovered those fragments and I lined the latex rubber with Japanese tissue infused with BEVA film which was very successful and in some places you could tell the latex rubber couldn’t – it needed a little manipulation before it would adhere to the Japanese tissue but over all it was a good process. We also had to add internal armature pieces to this specimen so we could attach it to a new display mount without having to nail into the latex again. It’s a great project, it involved many different techniques and materials and I even got to talk to a taxidermist about what to do and a new display mount and things like that. Fortunately there were no heavy metal pesticides which is common in these types of collections. We used x-ray florescence and x-ray radiography to confirm that.

Church: What were your armature pieces made of?

Ritchie: We used wooden pegs inserted into one of the hands and then a threaded metal rod inserted perpendicularly into that and both of those were held into place with Araldite epoxy. We then reconstructed the palm around the threaded metal rod using lightweight spackle. It’s micro balloons in acrylic emulsion adhesive. For the other areas it was just threaded metal rods that we inserted directly into the feet and into the legs and into the palm of the hands. We drilled into the new display mount and inserted the rods from the specimen into those new holes. We then covered them with washers and nuts and camouflaged it in the mount which was fun too.

Church: And did you have to treat the fur or the body of the orangutan any?

Ritchie: Surprisingly I didn’t. Orangutan have sparse hair so the juvenile female orangutan looks a little weird but there’s no hair missing. Some hair did detach a little bit but that’s to be expected with something that old. Fortunately we didn’t have to deal with that. The top layer of the skin was flaking off so there was a lot of skin consolidation and inpainting to give it a more visually uniform appearance. Taxidermy specimens are valued for their aesthetics so I got to do extensive aesthetic compensations just to make it display worthy again. This is the only specimen that the Buffalo Museum of Science owns of an orangutan. It’s probably the only one it will ever own because the species is endangered. So it was very important that they are able to display it because otherwise it is of no use to them.

Church: So what is the future of our orangutan?

Ritchie: Well, I think she is going to be going back to the museum and then hopefully not only used for display but also for teaching purposes. They have some curators there that are very interested in human evolution so they like to have these different primates to illustrate that with students and whatnot. I think that’s really great because not many people have seen an orangutan and not many people know what they are. I have been very adamant that it is not a chimpanzee and its not a monkey or a guerrilla or things like that.

Church: Well I know any conservation project you get really attached after the hours and hours you spend on it. Have you named the orangutan?

Ritchie: That’s such a great common question. This speaks a lot about me. I was so adamant that I wanted to know this was an orangutan that I kind of refused to name it. I wanted to continue to refer to it as the orang or the orangutan. But one of my classmates in grad school – in my grad school you become very close with your classmates and I loved the comradery – I was very close to many of them and one of them immediately named it ChimChim before it even came to the lab. I was like NO NO NO it’s not a chimpanzee. People are going to be so confused but of course that name stuck and that’s what almost everyone called it. Everyone, professors and students, were a little weary when she first came into the lab because she looked pretty bad. Some people were not used to taxidermy but by the end people were calling her ChimChim and giving her nicknames and what not. But I still go with orangutan. Which is interesting because when I first started working on taxidermy I did name everything. There are several specimens at the Biltmore estate in Asheville Carolina that have names but I think at this point I’ve worked on so many that – And I am very much into the biological side of it. That’s one reason this intrigues me too. I can learn about each specimen as I’m working on them. I maintain that professionalism.

Church: So you’ve got your year fellowship that your finishing up. What do you hope to do after that?

Richie: Well I will be a Mellon Fellow at the Smithsonian National Museum of American Indians. I am really excited about that because not only will I be able to work on Native American objects – which are very intriguing to me and have been my whole life – but there is also a research component to that. I will be researching how to consolidate attaching hairs on hides and furs. Not only does it relate to Native American collections but also continues with taxidermy. No one is really – as far as I can tell with my personal research – people haven’t really tapped into that and it’s something that is very necessary. I think that all these taxidermy collections – they are kind of coming of age and they are in many different types of locations not just national history museums; historic homes, discovery centers, educational centers. They have these collections and I think they are just starting to realize – like “oh wait a minute there’s hair below that caribou over there. What do we do about this?” It’s a very difficult problem so I’m hoping to start to tackle it. I’ll be a fellow at the NMAI and then we will see where I go from there – That’s for a year or maybe two. I am very much looking forward to working in Washington DC and tapping into that network of conservators. I’ve never worked there and I’ve always wanted to so its kind of a dream of mine that’s coming true.

Church: Good. Well if you could talk to people who are thinking of getting into conservation what recommendations would you give them?

Richie: Getting into conservation can be a little bit daunting. This is definitely a path that I have been following since I was an undergraduate at the University of Delaware and I was very lucky I just kind of fell into conservation. I didn’t know about it before accepting to go to Delaware. I was looking at their program right before starting my freshman year and saw they had this and was learning about the field right from the beginning. But the main thing is to get your academic prerequisites out of the way as soon as possible. The main things: chemistry, general chemistry, organic chemistry, a slew of art history and studio art classes. I actually took the more anthropological route and took anthropology classes instead of a lot of art history classes. So you can do that as well. And you need to look at the different schools and see what they require. So get those out of the way as soon as possible because it’s difficult to go back. Especially when you are busy working you don’t necessarily want to go take organic chemistry at night and deal with those labs and what not. But then the next hardest step is to just get your experience. Sometimes that might require you volunteer in labs because there aren’t an overwhelming majority of possibilities that are paid. That’s just an unfortunate reality of the field but there are many people that are willing to take on volunteers in turns and they know what that entails; what to teach them, the basics of the field, not only techniques but also ethics. That can be difficult but if you go to AIC’s website and you can find a conservator you might be able to find people in your area and then contact them and begin your networking to see who is available to have interns and volunteers. You should expect to have at least a year, probably more, of pre-program experience before applying to grad school. I just think that’s so necessary because you need to know what you are doing – we were working on priceless artifacts. You need to have the confidence and the skills and the humility to be able to work on these. But I would stick with it even though it’s been a long winding road for me but it’s been very rewarding. I’ve been able to travel to many different places and countries to do conservation work. Even though it’s a small field within the United States there are a lot of opportunities for some exciting adventures.

Church: We hope you the best and we hope to hear from you in the future.

Richie: Thank you. I really appreciated my time in Louisiana. It was a great time in my life and I recommend it to many other young people. I’m happy that this project has continued this internship program.

Jason Church speaks with conservator Fran Ritchie about her work with taxidermy collections. Fran is a former NCPTT intern in the Archeology and Collections Program.

November 20, 2013

48. Maintaining Adobe Buildings in the Southwest: Interview with Jake Barrow of Cornerstones Community Partnerships (Episode 48)

Transcript

Miriam: Hi Jake, thanks for joining us today.

Jake: Well Thanks for having me, we really appreciate the support of the National Center here at Cornerstones and so I’m glad to be able to participate.

Miriam: To begin, can you describe Cornerstones and the work that you guys do there.

Jake: Yeah, sure. Cornerstones was founded in 1986 here in Santa Fe. We’re a non-profit, community organization and our mission is community and heritage, and it’s focused on communities and the preservation of their heritage.

The reason that Cornerstones got started was because in northern New Mexico there’s a lot of little villages–very historic little villages–predominantly built of adobe vernacular architecture and the center of the village in these communities was the little church–the mission church usually–and often times these things are 200 years old or older, and these churches were disappearing and becoming challenged in their preservation and so a group of very interested individuals in Santa Fe got together and formed Cornerstones to help those communities try to save their churches and that’s what we’ve been at ever since day one.

Miriam: Can you briefly explain the process of adobe construction and its significance?

Jake: The historical of significance of adobe or earthen architecture is pretty broad and I’ll start with that because it sets the context for something about the preservation of earthen architecture. And I’ll use the word “earthen architecture” in the broader sense since adobe is one methodology or one technique within the whole framework of earthen architecture.

Earthen architecture is one of the oldest forms of architecture known to mankind and it’s fairly ubiquitous throughout the world–predominantly in the equatorial regions–but almost every country has a tradition of earthen architecture and it’s generally believed that 50% of people in the world live in earthen architecture structures, so there’s a big broad history–international history.

And when we look at America we mostly look in the southwest–although it’s not completely true there’s sod houses in other states and we find adobe architecture in New York State–but predominantly in the southwest. Of course it’s a Native American tradition before the Spanish ever came to this region in the 17th c. and you can see examples of that–I think the predominant one that everyone knows so much about is the Casa Grande ruins in Coolidge Arizona which is like a 12th-13th c. puddled earth structure–multi-story–that survived all those centuries and is now a national monument.

And so the native American population used earthen architecture in a major way: all of their structures were built of earth or earth and stone. When the Spanish came we have a historical context there where different aspects were introduced particularly the adobe block. And so then we had some changes in the 17th c. coming to the southwest New Mexico primarily and later Arizona southern California Texas and in a state like New Mexico you could say that until the 20th c. the predominant architecture was earthen so we have that context here.

Then as a result we have a challenge of preserving that architecture and like anything else–like any other kind of preservation–it depends upon an extensive knowledge of material, how it’s used, and the history of it. So that’s what we’re involved in. And earthen architecture like all architecture has the characteristic of preservation maintenance being a factor–like a wooden building might be painted and the painting might be the sacrificial coat to preserve the wood, for example.

In earthen architecture it’s often been the protective skin which predominantly has been a mud plaster and so the preservation of these buildings is similar to other buildings in that you want a roof that doesn’t leak and a skin that’s compatible with building material and works with it and preserves it. And you want good drainage around the building so that water doesn’t get retained. So it kind of follows the same precepts of other building preservation but it’s just a different material and has its own characteristics that have to be paid attention to.

Miriam: Is there anything you see as the greatest challenge to conserving earthen architecture in the United States?

Jake: Well that’s an interesting question. There’s several challenges. One is the modern industrial material such as, let’s say, Portland cement. That’s one of the dominant ones that’s a modern material that has seen widespread use in the 20th c. in all kinds of ways. This material’s not particularly sympathetic with earthen architecture, and so a lot of old historic earthen architecture buildings have been coated with cement stucco and this has not been really positive treatment for earthen architecture buildings, basically because any moisture that gets in the walls of those buildings gets trapped in that cement skin and doesn’t allow it to evaporate out. You get a lot of subsurface deterioration on a historic earthen architecture building when it’s been cement coated. This is one factor and a real challenge for preserving earthen architecture.

Another factor is the building codes and we’re fortunate in New Mexico to have a historic earthen architecture building code which allows historic buildings to avoid being subjected to the contemporary earthen architecture building code so we’re lucky here. I can’t say that same thing is true in Arizona and some other states that don’t recognize earthen architecture, or have a much more rigorous building code for modern earthen architecture and they apply that to the historic buildings. It really has unsympathetic results, so struggling with building code is an issue throughout the southwest for preserving earthen architecture in addition to incompatible materials.

The third thing I would say is that there’s been a lack of a continuation of traditional knowledge and traditional ability and skill level to maintain earthen architecture which was very well known in the villages in the past–in the 19th c. and 18th c. But in the 20th c., with these new materials those traditional methods have been lost and people have forgotten how to do it so that’s where we come in with Cornerstones and so we really, really make an effort to help preserve the traditional methods of earthen architecture preservation and try to help those people in some way maintain a traditional knowledge that they need to preserve earthen architecture.

Miriam: Great. Can you tell us a bit about the people who volunteer for you and what skills they gain when they’re volunteering?

Jake: Yeah, we are predominantly a volunteer organization. We have several other outreach venues: we have interns, we conduct training workshops–but primarily we help communities organize volunteers to get out there and do work. We really have no skill set requirements. Typically what happens is that a village is working on a building and we’ll come in to help them with tools, equipment, and perhaps some leadership and organize workdays and get everybody started and usually we have a very standard process where we look at materials–of course we look at the problem and identify the issues and establish what the work elements are going to be: wall repair or mud plaster or what have you. And then what we like to do is to set up an adobe making workshop where we take really unskilled people, all ages, and make adobe bricks. We go through the process of selecting material and mixing materials the process of forming the bricks, drying the bricks, evaluating the bricks and that kind of thing.

Then the same thing with the walls: we’ll prepare walls and look for structural issues on walls and how to stitch and make those structural repairs. Cracks may be issues or erosion that’s happened in the wall. Often times we’re taking cement off. Then we’re evaluating the walls and we’ll go into a process of material selection and mud plastering and how to do that. And we really, really will find out over a period of a couple days who of the volunteers are picking it up and we try to get leadership going in that way to identify individuals who may know something about it or may have a natural talent for that kind of work and we encourage them to take leadership and we begin backing out, we begin disengaging as the community can take over. Our whole thing at Cornerstones is getting the community empowered to do the work and us kind of disappearing. The ideal situation is when the project gets going good we may not be there really hardly at all and then at the end we might come in and pick up our tools and equipment and scaffolding and demobilize and look at the work and give it a stamp of approval and pat the community on the back and make a plan for another workshop next year.

So that’s the ideal setting and we have volunteers from all over. I mean we certainly like to have volunteers from the community, but we’re a nationally recognized organization so we’ll get inquiries from people coming to the southwest who want to participate in some way, they’re on vacation usually or they’re a university crowd that may be doing a class in the southwest for a semester and they want to do some service learning in a community and we’ll connect them up. So a lot of times the workshops that are going on in the communities will be a mix of the community people and half the people will be coming from other environments. For instance this week we’re starting with a class from Castleton College in Vermont that are down here for a semester and they want to do a service learning project in the community so we’re participating with them in one of our communities to give those students a chance to experience the hands-on adobe but also the history of New Mexico in a tangible way so it’s really great–it’s a great process.

Miriam: Well that’s great and community involvement is so important for preservation generally. Now you mentioned moisture as being an issue with earthen architecture, and I know that Cornerstones worked with the community of Hatch, New Mexico when it was devastated by a flooding event. What does a person–who has a building constructed with earthen architecture–what do they do in the event of a flood?

Jake: Yeah, you know it’s a very tough question. I know the national center supported Cornerstones in putting out a little booklet called “How to Save Your Adobe Home in the Event of a Flood Disaster.” And for anyone that is interested we still have a number of copies of that to distribute to anyone on request.

Just in a nutshell, just to talk a little bit about that the process and everything, since adobe architecture is made of earth, water is one of the predominant causes for deterioration of an adobe building, and so in a flood incident, it can be catastrophic. I think just a rule of thumb would be that if there’s an anticipated flood coming then the idea is going to be to begin mitigation as soon as possible so the impact of the water on the building needs to be minimized in every way possible. Depending on the landscape around the building there could be some berming put in, some sand bag and berming help spread the water away from the building. Then secondarily, when floodwaters come, there’s a lot of groundwater there and it may have gotten into the building.

So the second mode of defense is to get the water out as quickly as possible with drainage and pumps as soon as the flood has subsided if you don’t want any standing water in the building. [Draining] would get it out of there as quickly as possible and once the flood has passed, an evaluation of a base of the substructure’s going to be required. Typically what is done is a visual evaluation, but if the building is cement-stuccoed it’s going to be important to cut windows, small 12 inches by 12 inches windows in various locations and see if the wall has gotten wet inside. For how wet is the wall, the concern is if the base of the wall gets totally saturated and stays saturated for a period of time it and can’t dry out, the likelihood of a structural slumping is very high and so the building owner has got to be prepared to shore the roof of the building as quickly as possible. And so once that evaluation is made to determine if the basal part of the wall is saturated with water or even got saturated and began to dry but is still wet–it’s very subject to settlement and so our suggestion is to go ahead and shore the roof structure so that if there is any settlement the roof is not going to collapse. And then piece by piece there’s a procedure of going in and making those strategic repairs to the base of the wall–basal stabilization we call it– to give integrity back to the basic wall structure.

Anything like introduction of concrete around it or anything like that are really very negative treatments and do more harm than good. Essentially what has to happen is that a structural system of going in and underpinning that deteriorated area with solid new adobe is what really is required. There’s a system for doing that and it’s described in our little handbook so I would encourage people to contact us and get a copy of the handbook–it’s free and we’ll send it out to them and it’d be helpful in terms of planning for that kind of event.

Miriam: Well thank you for talking to us today Jake.

Jake: Yeah, it’s great and any time and we’re so appreciative of the recent grant that the NCPTT gave to us for the curriculum we’ve been working on and we’re excited about that, it’s going into the community college this year it looks like and so we feel that the opportunities to train young people through curriculum development gives us another way to reach out to the larger community for the purpose of extending the traditional methodology for preserving earthen architecture, so thanks again to you too.

Miriam Tworek-Hofstetter speaks with Jake Barrow, Program Director at Cornerstones Community Partnerships, about organizing communities to preserve adobe architecture.

October 15, 2013

47. Recording Civil War Earthwork Fortifications with LiDAR (Episode 47)

Transcript

Ben: Hey Matt How is it going?

Matt: Its going pretty good.

Ben: If you would please tell us about what kinds of projects you have been involved with at the trust and what are your current projects?

Matt: Currently we are working on recording Civil War earthwork fortifications and Revolutionary War fortifications using 3D ground-based LiDAR scanners and also developing augmented reality apps to interpret the data we are collecting to the public.

Ben: Cool. So what is augmented reality and how is it used to preserve a site?

Matt: Well augmented reality is basically adding three dimensional or 2D objects such as 3D models of forts or 2D images, maybe historic sketch of the fort or engineering drawings and video content and audio content to the real world. So basically when you are on a site and you watch the app and move around with your smart phone you actually be able to see the content related to that site. So as far is it being used as a preservation method I would say it has more of an impact on preservation as in getting the public back involved with preservation and interested in preservation there for supporting the preservation as far as the public side of it.

Ben: So you guys are heavily focused on encouraging the public to be involved with these sites, now you mentioned ground-based laser scanning and LiDAR, how do you guys use that in terms of geospatial datasets and the process where you would go through collecting the data and then processing it? how does that work?

Matt: So basically we have Leica C10 Laser scanner that we are using from Georgia Southern University and what we are doing is going out and recording 3D topographic data these fortifications these earthwork fortifications. And how that works is that sensor sits on a tripod and fires a beam of light and measures the time it takes for the light to reflect back to get the distance therefore recording a survey similar to a total station but without the reflector. So this machine actually collects thousands of these points these measurements per second and this data can be used then to generate 3d models of the ground surface with all the vegetation removed giving us a better overview of the site and how the different features of the fort relate to each to one another. And as far as public interpretation we use these models and augmented reality but the data can also be used for monitor sites and managing the site as far as erosion that may occur over the years we can scan the sites and go back in a year and scan them again and measure erosion as far as road beds that have been cut through or any kind modern features that are impacting the sites or concerns as far as erosion. It also preserves the site digitally as it appeared on the day of the scan. So there is always high resolution three dimensional survey of the site digitally preserved so in the future we can go back and if anything happens to the site we can go back and see how it looked on that day.

Ben: So do feel using this data and inputting it into AR so people could see it, do you think this is one of those methods that should be added to a modern toolkit for preservationist or person involved in historic preservation?

Matt: Yes, and I think that we have had a somewhat of a disconnect with how we interpret our data and findings to the general public. We may find site reports and technical reports interesting and journal articles interesting but the general public as far as that type of information being consumed by the general public it usually does not go over to well. And also we have been interpreting sites primarily with text based signage or text and image based signage which as I have been scanning sites I watch visitors come to site look at the sign they don’t really read any of it look around kind of wonder what happened here and walk off. So with the increase use of smart phones and tablet pc, you know a device that essentially everyone has now.

BEN: a Mobile device?

Matt: A mobile device yeah. We have decide that, that will be a way to reach the general public on a device that they are familiar with, familiar using would be with the augmented reality.

Ben: So a lot of this work is stemming from your master’s thesis work. Can you tell me a little bit about it? A little bit more specific detail about it.

Matt: Well we have been collecting data for the last four years now, on various earthwork fortifications related to the Civil War on James Island in SC. We have compared the number of known sites with the number of sites visible using freely available aerial LiDAR data and the size of the features to kind of gage how well freely available data performs for prospecting and locating sites. We have been using the ground-based laser scanner to assess the erosion that has occur on the sites since their construction to the present day to get a general estimate on erosion rates into the far future and to better manage the sites. And we are taking the LiDAR data and actually comparing profile slices of the parapets and other features related to the fortifications to contemporary engineering drawings of the fortifications.

Ben: Now I know from working with you before I know that you have been working on trying to integrate the aerial LiDAR with terrestrial LiDAR and how would that work and has it been effective has it been good for use in augmented reality?

Matt: well we have been trying integrate and we have successfully integrated several datasets that we have collected from James Island with the freely available aerial LiDAR that was shot for flood plain mapping and as far as the results we have gotten pretty good accuracy and that has occurred by picking out landmarks, such as street corners drive ways etc. houses, and conducting high resolution scans in those areas and then overlapping that data and georeferencing it to the aerial based data. And what this does is the aerial based data actually gives a much better picture of the landscape and how the sites relate to the landscape and the area as a whole while the ground base data gives the high definition and detail of the actual features still presence at the site so it kind of gives a micro and macro view of the site.

Ben: Before concluding is there anything else you can think of or would like to add to anything we have discussed?

Matt: I would just like to say that you know I believe getting the public involved in and interested in these sites is key to preservation and I think that we often over look. Without public interest and public involvement with these sites there’s no funding there’s regulation to preserve these sites. So you know anything, I think we need to step up our interpretive sides of historic preservation.

Ben: And additionally, do you feel augmented reality could be one of those solution?

Matt: Yeah and augmented reality is definitely one of those solutions. You know it is format that devices format that everyone is familiar with that is widely used every day. If you walk on a college campus or you are walking down the street, you will see numerous people texting checking their email surfing the web. So it is a device that the public is very familiar with and that they use every day and if we can present or if we can reach them through this device I believe it will be a very effective means of interpreting a site and getting our interpretations of sites up to par.

Ben Donnan speaks with Matthew Luke an archaeologist who is using augmented reality to aid with preservation and interpretation of South Carolina battlegrounds.

September 17, 2013

46. Restoration of the Camden House Orchard with with arborist Rico Montenegro (Episode 46)

Transcript

Paul: So the first question I was wondering about was how did you originally become involved with the Camden House?

Rico: Well, I’ve been involved with the Camden House orchard at Whiskeytown National Park [National Recreation Area] for at least 13 years. At the time I was involved with the construction of a new botanical garden for a new museum and garden complex called Turtle Bay in Redding, CA.

I was also teaching in the Horticulture Department at a local college called Shasta College. I had previously been involved with managing a university botanical garden in southern California that had at the time the largest collection of fruit trees of any garden in California and it was certainly the most popular of any of the classes I had taught. So, I had a real interest in this area and when I was made aware of this old orchard up at the Camden House, I went up to visit it. I become friends with the botanist that was there at the time, and I expressed interest in helping to restore it and possibly bringing students and others up to help with its pruning. So I became involved with the orchard, as a volunteer, and little by little, with the restoration of the old apple trees that were associated the Camden House.

Paul: Do you happen to know when the trees were planted and who planted them?

Rico: The trees range in age from 100-150 years of age and were planted in association with an early homestead and a hotel that was built to provide a way station and a source of food for travelers that were going from the inland to the coast and back. The site had been developed by early pioneers, prospectors Charles Camden and Levi Tower, who were involved with providing a rest stop and a gateway for travelers to the coast. They actually had a toll bridge there so people had to pay a toll to cross over the creek to get on the road that took folks over, through the mountains and to the coast where gold and redwoods were located.

Paul: What are you planning on doing with the trees now that you’ve started working on them?

Rico: Whiskeytown National Park [National Recreation Area] is now really quite committed to the preservation of these old trees and providing some resources to insure their survival. When I first became involved with the orchard it had actually been let go for quite a number of years and the trees had been subject to a lot of neglect and abuse. Originally it was an orchard of about 1000 fruit trees of all types. What is left now are about 30-35 apples, some cherries, a few pears and a stand of persimmons that are native to the eastern part of the United States. Some of the pear trees are also quite old with some possibly being original while others may be seedlings. The intent right now has been to do what I can to restore them. Because of the condition of the trees, none of them can be essentially brought back to what they originally were. Somebody years ago went at the trees with a chain saw, leaving trees with very large wounds that never healed. This resulted in decay, with many of the old trees being heavily damaged. Most of the trees rotted out in their crowns with some losing as much as, some essentially were left with about a quarter of the trunk, and some so decayed that they could easily be pushed over. A few of these trees have maybe two or three inches of cambium tissue left. When I first became involved with these trees, they were heavily infected with fireblight, which is a bacterial infection that causes severe dieback. The trees, if they were lucky, had fruit that was very small and inferior. But since that time the annual pruning that we do has eliminated the fireblight, though it comes back periodically. The trees are now very productive with lots of fairly good size apples and healthy vigorous growth. There has been some work with the propagation and grafting on new rootstocks off some of these trees and some replanting in one section of the orchard near the Camden House.

Paul: Do you prune overgrown trees differently than the ones that have been pruned for a longer, more consistent, period of time?

Rico: Yes, there are basic pruning principals that apply to all tree pruning, but the goals and methods used are different than on a newly planted tree or one that has been pruned and maintained annually. I teach and follow basic pruning principles that are taught by the International Society of Arboriculture. I am a certified arborist. In a commercial orchard you will always notice that the trees are trained so that they branch fairly low to the ground, so typically I tell people, that you want to train them so that they start their first branch maybe about 18 inches from the ground, that way you can keep the trees lower. And the lower they are, the easier access you have to the fruit and the easier it is to maintain the trees. In earlier years it was a whole different procedure because they had a lot of predators, especially with the wildlife, like deer, but you may have also had problems with bears which is a much harder problem to deal with. So they typically trained the trees so that they branched very high off the ground and they used orchard ladders to maintain and harvest the fruit. Most of the trees branch fairly high off the ground right now but we are working with staff to reduce their height. All the trees that were pruned heavily in the past with the chain saw were not maintained so the trees grew back up with what we call water sprouts, so they just went straight up. Many of these trees, when I first started working on them, were almost 35-40 feet in height, but with very weak structure. They had a tendency to split and break apart when they reached a certain height because of poor attachment, because of rot and decay, and sometimes bear climbing up on the trees. Bears love apples, and they can bring whole sections of trees down. So the intent is to reduce the height of the trees using a technique called crown reduction, which is a very specific pruning method for size reduction, as well as doing lacing or thinning out of the trees. As the trees come into production we use pruning techniques that will encourage and emphasize good fruit production.

Paul: Are you pruning these trees by yourself or have you been able to develop a volunteer core to help you out with this?

Rico: Well, the first year I may have worked on the orchard by myself. I then started bringing some college classes that I was teaching up to the orchard as part of the course, then I opened it up to the community. Over the years I have offered classes annually to the community on basic fruit tree care and pruning, starting from young trees up. On the first Saturday in February, I’ve offered a free class on restoration pruning at Whiskeytown National Park [National Recreation Area]. The classes I teach provide information on restoring older trees, particularly fruit trees, though the techniques I teach can be applied to any type of tree. The information I provide helps people learn how to properly manage their own trees. The classes are of particular interest to people who have had trees that have been badly abused, like the ones at the park, or trees that have been let go and neglected and they want to know what I do to restore them. What is most popular is that I encourage people to bring their own pruning tools, and after we’re done with the class they have an opportunity to have some hands on experience.

Years ago, I started off with a handful of people who came up every year to help and learn about how to care for these trees. Over the years this activity has grown. Normally I’d have between 15-20 people show up on a Saturday morning. Last year I had over 40, and this year, I had over 65 people show up. I always hold the activity the first Saturday of February, which is a good time to do the pruning on these old trees in this region, while the trees are still dormant. The best time for pruning in other regions will vary, depending on their climate. Park staff, this year, was actually taken aback by the number of people who showed up. It was by word-of-mouth and some emails, because I didn’t really have the chance to get it in the paper this time, but the turnout was amazing and people seemed to really appreciate receiving the information and knowing how to accomplish the pruning.

I tell everybody, not only are you going to have an opportunity to have some hands on experience, but then you are going to walk away feeling you’ve made a positive contribution to the [National] Park Service and to the community and the restoration of these old historical trees. People feel really good about that. So they’ve gotten a chance to learn by doing it, they’ve had, or they’ve seen what mistakes others have made, and they then learn how to make corrections, or how to restore damaged older trees. I always tell people that with young trees figure it’s going to take about 3-4 years to develop the structural framework that will be permanent on that tree. When you’re restoring older trees you’re approaching it from a different goal, so I tell them to figure 5 or 6 years, or it could even be a little bit longer, because you’re going to work on restoring the trees slowly until you’ve gotten it back into a state of structure and productivity. Most of those trees were in pretty bad shape when I started 13 years ago and they will never fully be restored to what they could have been if they had not been so badly damaged. So the intent is to bring them back into a stable condition so people can see these historical trees and their association with this historical home on the site as well.

Paul: What happens to the fruit when it is ripe?

Rico: People are always invited, to come out, especially the volunteers, and taste the fruit. School children enjoy this part when they show up for field trips. Two years ago, and this fall will be the third year, the Park Service held a harvest festival associated with the apples and the old house. They had a minimal amount of advertisement the first year but the response from the community was so great, that they decided again last year to do it with an equal response. So now they have determined this is going to become an annual event at the park with activities for the kids and even an apple tasting of some of the different fruits. Last year I did two tours of the orchard at the festival and was able to talk to people about coming back and participating in my classes and helping with the trees. That’s probably why, though I didn’t do a survey, so many people showed up this last February to participate in the restoration class that I taught.

Paul: Are you in a partnership with the Park Service to develop a management plan to maintain these trees in the long term?

Rico: Yes, that’s evolving right now as they are not only looking at the trees, but they are looking at the whole historical site itself. The house referred, to as the Camden House, is open up on weekends at certain times of the year for tours. Before coming to this region years ago, I managed a botanical garden that had a mid-1800’s historical home on the premises that had become a significant part of the gardens with associated period gardens and activities. This drew a whole different group of people. The Park Service here has done a lot of work on the house already and are now looking to develop a plan for the house’s use, as well as associated gardens around the house which includes the apple orchard.

I feel really good about what has happened, especially because now the Park Service has a committed to see that this site is preserved and maintained. Just this last year they replaced a decaying redwood water storage tank that was used as the only source of water for irrigation for a section of orchard that’s closest to the house. Most of the trees in outlying areas still don’t get summer irrigation so they just survive on their own without supplemental water. Hopefully, at some point in the future, the other outlying trees will get supplemental water during the summer months. So the answer, is yes, there is a management plan that’s evolving. The plan also includes the propagation and the preservation of the gene pool that we have with the trees here. Many of the cultivars and varieties growing here are not necessarily available in the trade anymore. Many of them though have been identified, but not all of them as yet.

Paul: Before we finish up are there any additional comments you’d like to make about historic orchards and their care?

Rico: Some people look at these old trees and question the reason for putting such effort into the restoration and preservation of them and think, are they really worth bringing back? Some fruit trees, especially apple trees, can live as much as 200 years. There’s a real growing interest in these old cultivars. As I’ve experienced around the country, and because of the work that I do now with the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation, where we donate fruit tree orchards throughout the world, I’ve had the opportunity to come in contact with a number of older growers who are still growing some of these old varieties and cultivars. People are beginning to realize not only do they have historical significance, but they have attributes that some of the newer varieties and cultivars don’t have. These fruit trees are significant, as people really feel they are part of our living history and fabric. They have a lot of real important things that they bring to our community. I’ve seen communities come together around the planting of community orchards, and here the preservation and restoration of this magnificent old orchard and that’s pretty exciting to me. I think the Park Service realizes that, and I know across the country there’s a few old orchards associated with historical sites. I think Monticello is an example of that, they have done work for a number of years, on the perseveration of some of their old varieties of fruit trees.

Paul: Alright, well thanks very much for talking with me Rico, I really appreciate it.

Rico: Well it’s been a pleasure and it’s been an exciting experience for me over the years volunteering and bringing the community together in the restoration of those old wonderful trees. So, thank you very much for letting me share this.

Paul: Thanks Rico.

Paul Cady speaks with Rico Montenegro, Chief Arborist for The Fruit Tree Planting Foundation, about pruning neglected historic orchards.

August 19, 2013

45. Learning From the Texas Wildfires: Bastrop State Park and Beyond (Episode 45)

Transcript

Sarah: Hello Fran and Miriam. Thanks for joining me today.

Fran: It’s our pleasure.

Sarah: Miriam, could you tell me a little about the Bastrop State Park and the wildfire?

Miriam: Okay, well the park was established at the beginning of the 1930s and shortly afterwards the CCC, the Civilian Conservation Corps, started developing the park. There are a number of CCC structures still standing. There’s a group of day use buildings, a group of cabins, two overlook structures, and a number of culverts. The 2011 fires, started in September and it burned through most of that month. During that time most of the buildings were protected from the fires. So the day use buildings and the cabins, the wild land firefighters were able to work the fire around the buildings, but the overlook structures and the culverts were all burned over in the fire.

Sarah: Fran, what were you trying to learn about the Bastrop State Park wildfire in particular?

Fran: Well, we thought it was an opportunity to gain some information about a really tragic event that had occurred. With the idea that the more we learned about what had happened and what the results were the better able we were to put together some guidelines for preventing damage in the future from wildfires. Specifically, we started out with the idea that we really wanted to assess the damage that had occurred. From our early site visit and from discussions with Texas Parks & Wildlife we knew that there had been some damage to some of the structures. So our idea was to really look closely as how the exposure to the wildfire had affected those materials and we approached that in a scientific manner. From the information that we gained we then learned a lot about how wildfires are likely to damage historic structures. With that information we could put together guidelines that the parks might follow to help prevent future damage, to help them be better prepared.

Sarah: How did you and Miriam become involved in the project?

Fran: Well, I got involved because I was part of a team that wrote a grant application to NCPTT. Our team was me, representing the University of Texas at Austin, and Casey Gallagher, a recent graduate of our Historic Preservation [Program] here at UT. We talked about this idea for a grant proposal, as we had both worked a bit with Texas Parks & Wildlife, we thought that they would be a really excellent partner. The grant application was put together by our team, but the grant applicant was Texas Parks & Wildlife. So Casey Gallagher and I were subcontractors, if you will, to [Texas] Parks & Wildlife; and worked closely with them throughout the project. We applied for the grant, I think, in Fall of 2011 and then in the Spring of 2012 we found out that we’d been successful with our grant application. That summer Miriam was between her first and second years of the Historic Preservation Program at the University of Texas and each student in our program is required to do either a master’s thesis or a professional report. So I talked with Miriam and I had worked with her before and knew that she was a good student, an excellent researcher and a person I could depend on. So I talked with her about this project and just shared with her the idea that this would make an excellent thesis topic and convinced her that this was a project that she could tackle.

Sarah: Miriam, Could you tell me a little bit about your testing and process?

Miriam: For my part of the grant project I spent a lot of time thinking about the stone, I think we all did. We knew from research that stone, even when it doesn’t obviously react to a fire through spalling [for instance], can still be damaged on a micro level. Our testing started with a water absorption test to see if that could give us an idea of any sort of changes in the stone between our unburned sample and the samples we had taken from the buildings. From that testing we got a range of different absorption rates, so there wasn’t anything conclusive from that. From there we contacted a geologist at UT’s Jackson School of Geosciences, and he was a scholar in the stone around Bastrop and was really familiar. I should say that the stone that was used in these buildings was all quarried locally. He came out to the park with us to look at the stone, and he helped me doing examinations with the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and with those examinations nothing was seen that indicated real serious structural damage to the stone.

Sarah: Could you tell me a little bit more about how this could be applied to other wildfire cases?

Miriam: One thing that we haven’t talked about yet is the importance of building a defensible space around structures in a wild land situation. Having clear space for firefighters to be able to work fires around a building and preventing the fire damage in the first place is very important. Then also an awareness that fire is going to affect different materials differently. Different stones will react to the fire exposure and will be damaged more so than we believe that the Bastrop fires on sandstone was.

Fran: This was a very interesting project, Miriam’s work as she discussed was focused on the sandstone in a highly technical way. We had an opportunity to really look very closely at the effect of the wildfires on material. I think that her work adds to the body of knowledge about the effects of high temperatures and fire on materials, there is a body of literature. So I’m pleased that she could add to that. Because we looked closely at what had happened during that 2011 wildfire period and we studied the effect of wildfires on parks, both state and national in other parts of the country, we were able to develop some guidelines for Bastrop and other state parks in Texas and beyond to follow[in order] to be better prepared to deal with disasters of these type. Part of our grant products included guidelines for preparing and dealing with these kinds of issues. I think the other thing that came about through our study was the realization that you really have two communities who are involved with the study of wildfires in these sorts of situations. You have the historic preservation professionals, cultural resource managers, conservators, historical architects, and the like; and then the other community are the folks who are trained as firefighters and first responders. What we discovered was that these two groups in Bastrop, but I think we see this trend throughout the United States, don’t communicate as well as they might. Part of our study was to point this out and recommend ways to remedy this kind of rift between the two groups. The groups certainly are interested in the other groups work, but our recommendations were for ways in which these groups could better work together and coordinate their efforts. In my view that was one of the most important things that came out of this study.

Sarah: Thank you guys once again for giving your time today and talking about your project.

Fran: Thank you.

Sarah Hunter speaks with Fran Gale, Director of the Architectural Conservation Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin, and Miriam Tworek-Hofstetter, recent graduate from the University of Texas’s Historic Preservation Program. The three will discuss a recent NCPTT grant project titled “Learning from the Texas Wildfires: Bastrop State Park and Beyond.”

July 9, 2013

44. Incorporating Wiki-based Assignments in Higher Education (Episode 44)

Transcript

Byrd: Welcome to the Preservation Technology podcast. I’m Stephanie Byrd, and today I’m talking with Bruce Sharky, a landscape architecture professor at Louisiana State University.

Welcome Bruce!

Sharky: Hi, Stephanie. Thanks for arranging for this.

Byrd: Now, Bruce, you’ve been working to incorporate Wiki-based assignments into your classes, can you describe the projects for our listeners?

Sharky: Sure. I’ve done it in advanced studios, I’ve done it with graduate students – second year graduate students – and I’ve done it with seniors, undergraduate, and the classes that I’ve had with graduate students has been in regional planning and the assignment was what I called “Rain, Wind, and Fire,” and each of the students is assigned a natural phenomena, such as hurricanes, global warming, ground subsidence, and each one is assigned one of those topics and is to develop a storyboard to explain their phenomena, to explain how it works, all the factors, what’s the impact on the landscape over time, and as a part of that, I have them go to Wikipedia and find their topic, and one of the diagrams that they’re to develop to be in their final storyboard presentation is to be a diagram that could be incorporated into an already written Wikipedia article on their assigned phenomena, with the idea of the one of the landscape architect’s roles could be, in contributing to the body of knowledge, is to make the information in, say, a scientific article, more accessible through diagrams. Good visualization of a concept, and so, basically that’s been the assignment, and I’ve done it for two years.

With the undergraduates, I’ve teamed up with a biology teacher here at LSU who has upper division students, and they’re assigned something somewhat similar having to do with the coast of Louisiana in biology and we team up one of my students with one of their students. They’re students basically do the research and then serve as a client to my students who they request to develop a diagram to be included in the biology student’s report.

So, basically, those are the two assignments. The first, again, with the graduate students, and that’s a standalone, the students working through Wikipedia making their contribution there, and the second is with seniors working with biology students.

Byrd: Now, with the undergraduate project, was their report then translated into a Wiki article, or was it a standard report that was turned into the professor?

Sharky: The goal was for the report to be submitted to Wikipedia for consideration, and in the case of the graduates, the students would then post their diagram and it would go through the review process that Wikipedia has established. Some of them have actually been incorporated into an article.

Byrd: Why did you choose to have your students adding graphics to Wikipedia articles rather than written content?

Sharky: The course was a studio course, and this was some early research that I had them to do for a semester long project, which was going to be a planning design project, and it was not meant as a report. Basically, Wikipedia several years got a grant to try to facilitate and have more and more university involvement in developing Wikipedia contributions, and they had targeted students. Actually, in, not even in the sciences, it was in the social sciences, but I happened to be in this meeting, and I offered that I wanted to be involved with my students. I thought it would be a good learning process for my students for them to understand better how Wikipedia works and the quality of the articles and the information that one can get from Wikipedia and, at the same time, make a contribution. I wasn’t about to have them write a paper on ground subsidence on the coast, although they did do a storyboard and essentially it was a visualization of explaining the phenomena as opposed to doing some kind of research on the phenomena.

The assignment of developing a graphic for their assignment improved the quality of their ability to communicate, say, complex ideas, graphically or visually, which I thought was important.

Byrd: And it makes it so that the student’s work is also bettering people’s understanding like you were talking about earlier.

Sharky: You really have to understand something to draw it, to draw a really good graphic that communicates, very quickly, and is accessible, understood, by all levels of people looking at the article.

Byrd: You’ve said that you’ve done assignments like this for several semesters now, how has the assignment changed or evolved over time?

Sharky: The assignment has evolved in that the first two times I did it, it was students in a class, working individually to make their contribution and that their work was then posted to be reviewed by the Wikipedia community and then critiqued, and if it eventually became acceptable it was included. In the second case, the assignment changed in that their client, so to speak, was someone in another profession, namely biology. So the goal in the second case, and I’ve done that twice now, as well, was for my students to learn, to have experience talking to people in other disciplines and working together to arrive at some common goal. So, in the second case, I added the layer of working with someone in another discipline and actually establishing a client-consultant relationship, which I thought would be a good experience for the students.

Byrd: With the students, what were their initial perceptions and then their final thoughts of working with a Wiki?

Sharky: The graduate students actually had, I think, a better experience in that they were actually, once they posted their diagram, they were getting feedback [from] all over the world, cause it’s posted and anyone, I mean there are people all over the world that spend a lot of time as reviewers of Wikipedia articles. I don’t think there’s any other venue that gets vetted as on the Wikipedia review community and we had people in, literally, from many parts of the world critiquing the students. The students really then, not that they didn’t take it seriously, but they got much more serious about what they were doing because they realized that people took them seriously and were giving them critiques that they were not used to, say, in a design studio critique.

Byrd: Well, Bruce, thank you so much for joining us today and I wish you the best of luck in your further Wiki projects.

Sharky: Very good, and thank you, Stephanie. Good luck.

Stephanie Byrd speaks with Bruce Sharky, a landscape architecture professor at Louisiana State University.

April 22, 2013

43. David Morgan Talks About SEAC (Episode 43)

Transcript

Church: Thanks for talking to us today David. Many of our listeners will remember you from past NCPTT podcasts. But today we are here to talk to you about your position at SEAC and what SEAC is and what projects you’re doing.

Morgan: Sure, I’d be happy to Jason. It’s good to be back. SEAC is the Southeast Archeological Center. We were established in 1966 as one of but two centers of archeological expertise that the National Park Service currently maintains.

We were at the time, located at Ocmulgee National Monument and we moved to Tallahassee, Florida in 1995, where we could have a research partnership with a tier 1 research university, that being Florida State University.

What we are is really a support center for the Parks in the southeast region of the United States, so our territory spans from Louisiana up through Kentucky over to North Carolina, back down through the Caribbean and over, and so we’re located again where we are really, to be central to that larger sphere of the southeast and the Caribbean. As I say we provide support to all of the Parks within that region. So there are Parks that have archeologists there and so one of my duties is to also act as the regional archeologist, so I help coordinate the efforts of all the individual archeologists out in the Parks. But a lot of Parks don’t have on board necessarily, the cultural resource expertise to deal with archeological issues. So a lot of what we do for the Parks is really sort of multifold. On one hand we provide assistance with planning for projects because you don’t want to be, for instance if you’re Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood home, you don’t want to be the park that accidentally destroys the archeological remnants of Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood home.

And so Parks of course, as part of their compliance with the National Historic Preservation Act have to make sure that any sort of ground disturbing activity that they’re doing, they’ve really thought through. So the other component of that of course is that there’s a huge research component because often the archeological resources at these Parks are something that the Parks wish to highlight and to better understand and to interpret to the public. So we also do the sort of frontline primary research for the Parks as well.

A lot of times Parks try to figure out what resources they actually have. As many people might know, the Park Service has really surveyed in the southeast only about 4% of their terrestrial resources and about 3% of their submerged resources. So one of the things we do is to assist the Parks, and this is also part of planning, in making sure that they’re aware of the resources that may be on their lands as they go to develop them or interpret them or just simply manage them. So we provide a lot of management expertise for the Parks along the way.

We also serve as a repository for archeological materials for the southeast region. So at SEAC we hold under curation about 9.4 million objects and about three quarters of a million archival documents that support those.

So we are a centralized repository for the southeast and that again is a place where we interact with a lot of the public, so we get a lot of professional archeologists who are coming to do primary research working with the documents from say, WPA, to documents that people are working on most recently. So for example, Daniel Bigman has come from the University of Georgia as part of his doctoral research and has used a lot of collection from Ocmulgee National Monument in tandem with primary research of his own, a lot of geophysics to develop some really good cutting edge understanding of the Macon Plateau. So we do a lot of interaction with the public there.

Of course this is also a great cost savings for the Park Service because we can maintain one big collection environment with one set of pest management protocols, with one curator, with one set of trained professional museum staff members to take care of it as opposed to having to try and replicate that at every park or series of clusters of Parks, so it’s really an economy of scale and it’s also an economy of expertise. That’s one of the things that makes centers like the Midwest Archeological Center and the Southeast Archeological Center really special, is that you have a collection of experts and by having this economy of expertise there, it makes the kind of service that we provide the Parks really much, much more valuable and stronger than it would be if you have just your one archeologist in the park to really kind of work with.

Now one of the other things I should say too is that that’s really the behind the scenes support that we provide for the Parks but the other half of our mission is very strongly oriented to external activities. This is really a holdover from early days in the Park Service when the interagency archeological services units were created throughout the regions. There was legislation passed in the seventies that gave the Secretary of the Interior responsibility for assisting other federal agencies with their cultural resource needs. The Secretary of the Interior tasked that responsibility to the National Park Service and the National Park Service delegated it down to the regional directorates as this IAS, the Interagency Archeological Services, so SEAC still maintains that mission. Naturally a lot of agencies have their own cultural resource staff now. It’s nearly three decades since this legislation was passed. Many federal agencies have developed their own capacity for this but the National Park Service is still recognized as a flagship for cultural resource expertise, and so a lot of agencies still turn to the Park Service for assistance. In a lot of cases it’s more cost effective to the taxpayer and to that agency to have us come and do the work than for them to try and hire up the staff necessary to do it themselves. So we end up providing a lot of assistance, technical assistance, policy assistance, field assistance to numerous different agencies. This occurs at the federal level but also by their state and tribal partners. It also occurs on more local and community levels as well.

At present we’re assisting the US Forest Service and doing inventories of some of their properties in Florida to help them identify where their archeological sites are. We’ve been assisting the Department of Defense both with climate change studies, looking at coastal erosion and monitoring the effects of coastal erosion, as well as helping partner with a field school at Louisiana State University to help them understand some of the resources that they have on their property. We also work across the board with the Parks as well, for a lot of interpretation and public outreach.

We try to integrate volunteers into a lot of our projects. We make sure that the information gets out to the public, a lot of outreach. So those are some of the things that we do as kind of baseline work at SEAC. We’ve been with the Park Service now for forty years plus and so we have a huge amount of experience in dealing with our Park Service units. so we are truly well versed in what the Parks need. We also are a frequent “go to” partner for our Parks because they know that we understand the parameters of the organic act that they work with so that we understand that were not shooting for just mere compliance as kind of the baseline for which we’re going for. Instead we understand that we’re working to make sure that part of the organic act that we’re helping to safeguard these resources and keep them unimpaired for future generations. So we help the Parks in a great deal act as stewards for these resources along the way. So those are some of the things that we do for the Park Service and for our partners outside the Park Service as well.

Church: Sounds great. What are you working on now? Is there anything in particular, any large projects, or just really exciting ones that you’re working on currently?

Morgan: We are constantly working on projects. There’s always something exciting going on. There’s always something really interesting going on and that’s one of the wonderful perks really of getting to work with all of my colleagues at SEAC is there’s no shortage of really great minds looking at really great projects. Helping out the Parks and being able to work in the Parks is just amazing because these are truly the crown jewels of really the resources that America has to offer.

So some of the projects that we’ve been working on recently is we’ve been teaming up with the Submerged Resources Center to help build our capacity for preserving our underwater resources as well. Recently we’ve partnered with George Washington University, the Submerged Resources Center, and Biscayne National Park to document an eighteenth century wooden vessel that’s in shallow water, was in sort of a precarious position in terms of its preservation, and we came in and brought in a number of students and ran it as a field school for them to help provide training. For the Park, they got documentation of a fragile impaired resource and for us it helped us fulfill our mission of making sure that we can be stewards for these resources along the way. So that’s one of the projects that we’ve been working on in terms of the underwater side of what we’ve been doing.

In terms of the terrestrial side, we have staff at SEAC who are just now preparing to go out to do another season of fieldwork at Cape Lookout, where we’re documenting a number resources in our coastal environments that are really being subjected to sea level rise and are being eroded out. So we’re taking a position where we’re documenting these resources as we’re afraid that they’re being lost. But it’s also generating primary data on climate change because these sites prove to be several thousand years old and are in different environments than they were now. They’re becoming impaired again. We actually have a chance to do some cutting edge research on long term duration and effects of climate change from several thousand years ago to today.

Another project that we’re doing is with Canaveral National Seashore where we have some amazing shell mounds that are poised right on the edge of the water and every time the waves hit, erosion occurs. The damage and loss to these is almost inevitable so we’ve worked with some of our active partners to figure out a way to use natural resources to armor and reinforce the bank lines in front of these by growing sea grass, also by growing and restocking oyster beds and letting natural processes help defend and armor that site from the effects of coastal erosion on it. That’s given us a lot of good opportunities to partner with a lot of different universities and preeminent researchers doing things like 3-D documentation, using Donax shells which is a species of shell that are fairly common in these that are used throughout the Florida coastal Georgia area to make coquina. Coquina shells is the common name. They are used as part of sort of a cement matrix for buildings and one thing and another. One of our researchers, Erv Kluetmeier at the Florida Museum of Natural History is using those and by looking at them microscopically and looking at the staple isotopic ratios of various elements in them, is able to project back and determine what the sea temperature was when those coquina were harvested and died several thousand years ago. So by looking at this simple coquina shell, he’s able to actually reconstruct the paleo climate so that we understand in a micro environmental level how climate change has occurred every thousands of years.

So we’re doing a number of these kinds of projects. They’re all based in partnerships. They’re all based strongly in cooperation with the Parks and Park Superintendents, who are the primary stewards with our partners because of course, we certainly do our best to stay on top of everything archeological. We are very much aware that there’s great minds throughout the country that we can bring to bear on this. In times where the economy makes it difficult to do some of this ourselves, this is a great time to embrace the partnerships we have.

So we have a lot of research that’s ongoing. We’re on the move almost constantly because the Parks are always working constantly to try and get the information out to the public, to safeguard those resources, or to plan ahead for the future.

Church: Sounds like you are on constant move, lots of projects. Must be pretty exciting. We appreciate your talking to us today and I would like to talk to you again in the future on new projects that you might be doing.

Morgan: My pleasure. Thank you.

Church: Thank you.

Jason Church speaks with Dr. David Morgan, Director of the National Park Service’s Southeast Archeological Center. Today we are listening to David discuss SEAC’s mission.

March 22, 2013

42. John Asmus on Laser Cleaning “Have Laser Will Travel” (Episode 42)

Transcript

Church: My name is Jason Church, Materials Conservator with the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training and today, I’m here talking with Dr. John Asmus. Dr. Asmus I was actually introduced to you at a LACONA Conference by Meg Abraham. She was explaining to me that you’re one of forerunners and she called you the father of laser cleaning. So what can you tell us about that?

Asmus: Well for recent years, actually they’ve been calling me the grandfather. We tend to think of Costas Fotakis, the Director Forth and Crete as the father because around 1990, he developed a very active program in laser treatment of artworks and he got LACONA going. I suppose the major thing I could say at that point was that most of the people who were doing treatment of artifacts with lasers at that time, thought that I had died twenty years earlier. In fact, it was Meg Abraham that said, “Why don’t you invite John to these things because he’s still around and he’s still active,” and so that’s how I got involved in the LACONA organization. I had long since moved into a number of different fields.

I did my first work on artistic materials using laser radiation in 1972 and it seems rather bizarre to me in retrospect, but several of us who were involved in the early projects in Venice and in Florence and so forth, as we usually do after performing some research, we wrote up manuscripts and we sent them off to the appropriate journal which in this case was Studies in Conservation. The editor of Studies in Conservation refused to even review our manuscripts and it’s impressed in my memory the letter of rejection that we received for several papers and the most succinct line that I recall is that “cleaning with lasers is so hypothetical as to not be taken seriously.” So I thought if that’s the way the community is going to respond to this, we’ll move on to other fields. So we adapted our laser divestment techniques to taking the paint off airplanes and more recently the paint off stealth aircraft which is a tremendously challenging application because you’re essentially taking epoxy paints off of epoxy composite substructures, which is a major problem in selectivity, far more complex than most of the things we find in the arts.

So we had been moving in those directions and then there were a couple of true believers in the viability of laser treatment of artworks. One of these was an art conservator for many years. He was chief conservator of sculpture in Venice and then he moved onto private practice in Padua and his name is John Carlo Calconyo and oh, every year or two, I’d get a call from John Carlo saying, “I’ve run into this terrible problem where we can’t get adequate divestment of something or another.” So I’d pack up one of the lasers from our laboratory and we’d go and work on Galileo’s office, the Cremona Cathedral, and other places and gradually the word spread.

I think after about twenty years, quite a number of art conservators and scientists who were interested in applying lasers to the arts, came to be familiar with this, and I think that culminated then around 1990 when Costas organized the first International Conference On Lasers In Art, which was subsequently renamed LACONA 1. It took place in Crete and it’s been going on from there. For a number of years, people referred to Costas as the father of laser art conservation. Somebody had pointed out that I had done it twenty years earlier and so they christened me the grandfather of lasers in art conservation.

Church: Now what was the first thing that you ever cleaned with a laser and when was it?

Asmus: Well, there’s a curious anecdote that has to do with all of this. We were in Venice making holograms thinking that when Venice was gone, at least we’d have these very high resolution three dimensional images of the Venice that used to be. And we were making holograms of some important sculptural pieces in Venice and one of these works, which was the polychrome wood carving of Saint John the Baptist by Donatello, we found that where the people in the gallery placed it when the Sirocco winds came up, rain started coming through the windows and rainwater was splashing on this priceless polychrome wood carving. So we called the conservator, what should we do? She came in and she covered the wood carving with plastic and then she said, “I really respect what you’re doing about saving the images of artworks, but why don’t you help me save the artworks themselves, the statues, the marble statues that were deteriorating.

Her name was Giulia Musumeci and she was employed by UNESCO and the Venice Imperil Fund, and she was trying to do what she could to save these marble statues of Venice. She pointed out to us that cleaning the statues was a major technological challenge. So she asked us if we would try our holographic laser on removing the crust from stone and everyone was amazed at how beautifully this worked. We had reinvented the laser eraser. The encrustation, the sulfates in Venice is black and it absorbs laser light and if you do it with short pulses you can cause the black encrustation to sublime and if that happens very rapidly there’s little if any heat that’s transferred to the stone itself. It worked perfectly.

So Giulia Musumeci located her mentor, Kenneth Heppell of the Victoria & Albert Museum, who was Sir Ashley Clark’s point man for saving Venice and it’s artworks. Ken Hepple was told about these initial results and he came over and we spent a day shooting different pieces of dirty stone that he had in his pocket. One pulse here, two pulses there, white stone, Portland limestone, istrian stone and so forth and at the end of the day he said, “This is the most spectacular advance in stone cleaning that I’ve seen in my lifetime.” We said “that’s great,” and we went back home to America and then we started receiving airmail packages and this is the answer to your question Jason. He would send us airmail monument stones from abandoned cemeteries in London. So we spent the first year back from Venice cleaning limestone, oolite, and other things from abandoned cemeteries in London and then airmailing them back to Ken Heppell. Then he started sending us pieces of cathedrals and I suppose the direct answer to your question Jason, is that he then began sending us some elements from the sculptural decorations on Wells Cathedral. These elements were all of oolite which is a very poorly consolidated limestone and it presents some unique problems in trying to clean it without damaging it. So we cleaned several elements from Wells Cathedral.

Then we were invited to the Royal Institute of Artistic Patrimony in Brussels. Rene Schnaers had heard about our work in Venice and he had us clean a sarcophagus that housed the remains of Erard de la Mark. This sarcophagus had been damaged during the French revolution. It hadn’t been properly cared for after that and so there was a great deal of external deterioration of that sarcophagus and I suppose strictly speaking, that sarcophagus, which I think was brought into Brussels from Liege, was the first major artifact that we used the laser on. From there, a month or so later, we went to Munich with our laser and Dr. Vokernaugle brought out a number of iron sculptures that had supposedly been the first major iron statues or sculptures created in northern Europe and we took what amounted to rust and corrosion off those iron sculptures. So I suppose those were the second things we had used lasers on that was actually useful and accomplished some conservation.

The first major project where lasers played a big role in major conservation efforts was in the city of Cremona, which of course is famous for stratovarian, guinarian , all the stringed instrument makers. In Cremona we did major parts of the facade of the Cremona Cathedral including marble reliefs of the four prophets at the front door, Isaiah and the others, and that was in 1989 and 1990. At that point we were cleaning many square meters of marble surfaces of intricate detail and that’s about the time that Costas Fotakis picked up this technology and really went with it.

Church: Now what kind of laser were you using?

Asmus: Well when we started our work, you didn’t have very much choice. In 1970, 1971 and 1972, there were really two major laser types that produced high powers in short pulses and these were neodymium glass lasers and ruby lasers. So the only way you could make pulse holography in 1970, 1971, 1972 was with a ruby laser because it’s wavelength matched the spectra responses spectroscopic photographic plates, the one used in holography. So we started out with a ruby laser and it was more suitable than neodymium glass lasers because glass has a poor thermal conductivity and you can’t really have a very high average power because you have to wait for the glass to cool down between pulses. So in the early seventies, there was really no choice other than ruby.

Now Neodymium YAG had been invented and had been turned into lasers but in the early seventies, neodymium glass rods were very problematical in trying to grow them to large sizes. Just about the time we were doing our work in Venice, the Lynton Corporation succeeded in making larger high quality Neodymium YAG rods.

So those became available in 1973, 1974 and so I think by 1975, everyone was switching to Neodymium YAG because it existed.

So I believe after about 1975, we and then all of our successors in this field, pretty much universally went to Neodymium YAG. Of course, in subsequent decades there have been a number of other lasers that have been developed that give you options for other wavelengths and of course the harmonic crystals for turning YAG infrared wavelengths into green and near ultraviolet have become available. So the stable of available lasers has broadened considerably.

At one time a very interesting laser type that emerged was the excimer laser using krypton fluoride and xenon fluoride. There was a period where we did quite a bit of laboratory investigation of using those types of lasers on artworks and it looked very promising, I suppose around 1980. But those lasers, those excimer lasers used gases and they’re complex and present reliability problems, at least then and about that time, picosecond and femtosecond lasers from a number of the solid state posts became available and I think those extremely short pulse lasers, picosecond and femtosecond have been so successful on some of the very fragile materials.

But I am not aware of anybody who’s proceeded with the excimer lasers to see what they can do. So I think between the standard Q-switched neodymium YAG lasers and the harmonic generation from those and a few of the offshoots is pretty much the range of lasers that you find using. Dye lasers hypothetically offer some possibilities because they’re so widely tunable but the dye lasers haven’t been that successful commercially at least to this point so I haven’t seen much activity with dye lasers.

Church: Sounds fascinating. I’ll look forward to it. Thank you for talking to us today Dr. Asmus. We hope to talk to you more in the future. Of course, you’ve given a great keynote here at the 2012 3D Digital Documentation Summit. We look forward to hearing more from you in the future.

Asmus: Well thanks, Jason and it’s been fun. I’ve met a whole new cast of characters associated with allied fields so I’ve made many friends, and I think maybe I’ve helped a little bit in exposing them to some of the experiences I’ve had over the last sixty years of this phase of my career.

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More information about Dr. Asmus and the history of technology in conservation can be found at his keynote address for the 2012 3D Digital Documentation Summit.

Jason Church speaks with Dr. John Asmus, Physicist at the University of California, San Diego. Today Jason is talking with Dr. Asmus about the history of laser use on cultural materials. Dr. Asmus is known as the “Grandfather of Laser Cleaning”.

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