Restoring History

HEAT WAVE: Artist Steven Payne, of Apache Junction, Ariz., formerly of Hot Springs, shields himself from the sun Monday as work begins on the mural wall at Hot Springs Documentary Film Institute’s Malco Theater.

Artist Steven Payne of Apache Junction, Ariz., has arrived in Hot Springs to spruce up the chipped and weathered mural that graces the north side of the historic Malco Theater.

Payne’s landmark mural is a giant painted filmstrip made up of a number of frames that each illustrate an Academy-Award winning documentary that has been screened at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Institute’s annual film festival, HSDFI board member and project coordinator Sissi Bennett of Hot Springs said Thursday.

“This is so important. I’m on a bandstand about getting it preserved,” Bennett said.

The mural’s varied subjects, such as boxer Muhammad Ali, photographer Richard Avedon’s model Dovima posed with elephants, and actor Orson Wells, rise two-stories high in the parking lot at HSDFI.

“The mural project is one of the many parking lot improvements HSDFI will be working on throughout the summer,” Malinda Herr-Chambliss, executive director, said.

Payne, formerly of Hot Springs, originally painted the gigantic black-and-white filmstrip 11 years ago for the HSDFI.

Thousands of motorists each day can view the landmark from a number of vantage points.

Earlier, Bennett set about to raise funds for the mural’s rejuvenation by calling on the local community. She placed calls to 40 citizens asking them each for $100 and they all surprised her with their willingness to give, she said.

“Everyone I have talked to said, ‘absolutely count me in,’” she said.

“Longtime business people and residents of Hot Springs, who are not connected to the film institute but want to save the mural, wanted to contribute,” she said.

Herr-Chambliss said Hot Springs has distinguished itself, as many cities have, with the art of mural paintings.

“Each frame is from a documentary we had screened. Now, after many years, so many local companies are coming forward with donated services, even in this economy, to help us renovate and stabilize a great piece of Hot Springs art available for everyone to see 24 hours a day.”

Even tourists who walked by this week and noticed the activity around the mural wanted to photograph it and were concerned the plan might be to paint over the existing images.

The only change to the mural Payne is considering is a brighter background, he said.

Cleaning the wall was planned for Thursday but the progress did not go as quickly as hoped while most of the day was used to gather supplies, find electrical outlets, line up tools and “the small things that are so important,” Bennett said.

Payne was on site Thursday assessing the damage to the wall.

“Look at that long crack. That will have to be fixed,” he said to onlookers.

Cleaning the wall is the first order of business, he said, anxious to get up on the lift and “get the goggles on.”

He will strip down parts of the damaged image before he begins the painstaking approach of “restoring it like an old master’s painting,” he said.

“Plugging” areas that have leached away and applying a coating of epoxy resin will improve the adhesion of paint.

Then Payne will “inpaint,” or paint back, the missing areas to get it as close as possible to the original.

Dan Anderson, a technical coordinator with the HSDFI will assist Payne with filming to document the process.

Ben Meade, HSDFI board chairman, said the grassroots support of the project has encouraged the board members.

“The local community has come together,” he said. “All the paint and supplies were donated by Sherwin-Williams and Hays Rental supplied the lift.

“To have a community come together like this is great. No one we have asked to contribute has said ‘no.’ All contributions, even the smallest, have ‘added up.’ A plaque will be engraved with all the contributors’ names and displayed,” he said.

Years ago, while Payne lived in Hot Springs, his creative ideas took shape in a number of whimsical pieces that popped up all over the city. He also mentored budding artists and enlisted their help to complete the artworks.

He placed a large-scale mosaic dragonfly in 2004 on the Convention Boulevard wall using elements of pieces crafted by students from Hot Springs Middle School and Gardner Math, Science, Technology Magnet School.

In a similar fanciful fashion, Payne created a 66-inch-square pyramid butterfly sculpture to raise awareness of the plight of the monarch butterfly. It still stands at the corner of Olive and Oak Streets beside the Clinton Cultural Campus. Students from Gardner Magnet school also made the ceramic tiles that make up that piece. Payne also helped the students with other larger-than-life projects at the school, creating a grid system to help the young artists enlarge their original drawings in the same manner that he used a grid system at the HSDFI mural project.

Payne said while he is in town he wants to visit the sites of his projects to see the surfaces’ condition and the maintenance they may require.

Call 321-4747 for information.

HSDFI would like to thank the following for their generous support and assistance on this project:

Sentinel-Record
Hays Rental
Sherwin-Williams
Arlington Hotel
Franz Vierbauer
Sissi Bennett
Bennett Brothers
Bob Shaw
Dr. Benjamin Meade
Sue McCumen Finley
Gardner Magnet Elementary School
Seiz Signs