AIC's 47th Annual Meeting

John DeFaro (Visual Artist/Collector) and Richard Hayden (Visual Artist/Curator) approached conservators Viviana Dominguez and Dimitra Pantoulia seeking their advice on preserving the paper masks of the contemporary self-exhibiting artist Michael Scott Addis from Miami for an exhibition to be held at Books & Books in Coconut Grove, Miami.

Addis is a homeless artist that lives at A Better Way, a rehabilitation facility in Miami, Florida. For more than 40 years, Mr. Addis has been creating his work using a mix of soap, paper, ash, and other materials, such as palm fronds, and animal bones, affixed to wire mesh support. He installs his art on trees, concrete walls, telephone poles, and other outdoor surfaces, within public view. Over the years his artwork has been torn, faded, and deteriorated. Mr. DeFaro, has been observing, documenting and acquiring the artist’s work from the streets of Miami for twelve years.

In recent months, the two conservators have been gathering information and interviewing the artist to acquire a better understanding of how the masks are fabricated. Several meetings with the curator of the exhibition and the collector have taken place to understand their goal for the upcoming exhibition in March 2019. Both conservators started performing conservation testing on the papier-mâché itself and also creating a stable support for the masks.

At this point the conservators have to decide the aesthetic treatment of the masks, taking into account that they were never meant to be formally exhibited in art institutions. They were created by a homeless individual for public viewing on the streets of which this individual called “his place of residence” much of his life. The conservators have to make sure that they will treat and stabilize the pieces without erasing their history and the scars that reflect their origin.

Within this Mishmash of artists, curators, conservators and collectors an idea emerged. A conservation workshop that will be appealing to and attract the art community is paramount. An open dialog will address the artist’s needs for preservation of the art. Addis’ work will be used as a case study to illustrate the ephemeral vs archive materials and the ethics behind conserving temporary street art.