Ellen: What we're looking at is a Sprite from Frank Lloyd Wright's project Midway Gardens,
which was a sort of concert hall/beer garden in Chicago.
It came to us in a really, really sad state.
Clearly, it's head is missing, that's the most glaring damage.
But more pressing was the system of cracks through its in section.
Every time you moved her, her top portion would sort of wobble.
It was very scary, and she wasn't stable enough for exhibition.
Ultimately, we discovered that the rebar was bent, so we had to cut her in half, separate
the two pieces, and then rotate the top portion, bring it down on the bottom half.
So looking at it now, it's back together, and then there's this funny, like marshmallow
fluff material that we're using as our bulk fill, the main filling component
which is more of that resin that we used to put the sculpture back together
but that's been bulked with glass micro-balloons which you see here.
These are very light little spheres made of glass which help bulk out the fill.
And then the idea of treatment was to…after that fill is completed, we come out to the
surface, we would finish it off with a skin of concrete mesh fill
using more of that acrylic resin, but this time bulked with actual concrete mortar
and more of these micro-balloons, and then into that we put sand to match the surface.
This is why I'm wearing a dust mask.
So this is the pigment that will color the fill.
And then you try to get it around an eighth of an inch or so thick.
And then you peel them apart, like that.
And you end up with a nice texture that grabs the sand that we're going to be applying later.
So you just let that cook for a little while.
Jessica, do you wanna take it away?
Jessica: Yeah.
So, while that sets, I'm gonna trace out the fill and I'll just put it down here.
And then I'm going to start to cut it out.
Basically, I'm just making little dots all the way around, so that I can find my trace,
and then I would go back and actually cut it out.
Now, it's just about connecting the dots.
So, to get the texture, we just use a little bit of acetone, just to reactivate the surface,
and we just brush it on, and then add sand.
All right.
So I'm just coating the back with the same adhesive that we used to make this.
A little sand helps to ease the transition.
Ellen: A final step would be to tone it with some conservation colors.
Where the fill we're making for the whole piece is the same color, more or less, the
same ingredients, but it's not going to match everywhere because the sculpture isn't all
the same color everywhere
so we built in this final step of toning as needed, the surrounding areas.