Lofty space gets a face-lift

A project restores the original colors to the interior walls of First Churches

By THE DAILY HAMPSHIRE GAZETTE and MEGAN BURBANK, pictures by Jerry Roberts, Thursday, July 31,2008

1 Veronika Kruta is one of four conservators working on the project, which includes re-painting a stencilled design on the walls in its original colors.

2 Scaffolding in the sanctuary of The First Churches in Northampton Thursday, which has been erected for the restoration project now under way.

3 Vitek Kruta of Holyoke paints a border around a plaster medallion Thursday, part of a floor-to-ceiling restoration at First Churches in Northampton.

4 Vitek Kruta holds a maulstick in his left hand to help guide his right hand as he paints a straight line bordering a stencil.

5 Philip Kruta of Northampton applies gold leaf to a design.

6 Vitek Kruta of Holyoke reaches up from his perch atop scaffolding to paint a portion of a stencil design. It's fair to say that Vitek Kruta likes a challenge.

The Holyoke artist and conservator has a month to restore the intricate stencilled banners painted on the walls of the spacious sanctuary of the First Churches at the corner of Center and Main streets in Northampton, as part of the church's ongoing large-scale renovation. But the time constraints aren't his only problem - Kruta's work is done while balancing on the floor-to-ceiling scaffolding that fills the sanctuary. The height alone is enough to make the most dedicated artist's stomach drop. And Kruta concedes that one of the hardest parts of the job is trying to paint in a straight line while reaching up to where the stenciling needs to go and "hanging there like a monkey." But difficult and impossible are two different things. Kruta is confident that he and his conservation team, who started their work on July 11, will finish on time. His crew includes his daughter, Veronika Kruta, and son, Philip Kruta, both students at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston; and conservation apprentice Bill Garvey, who's been studying with Kruta for three years. The four of them are currently in the process of restoring the decorative stenciled banners to the church walls using colors that match the original 1878 paint job. The walls have already been repainted; The team's work is about ornamentation.

'Such an institution' The project is part of an extensive renovation under way at the 130-year-old First Churches building, work that includes rebuilding the roof, replacing the sanctuary ceiling and repairing the stained glass windows.

The restoration work became necessary last year when a portion of the ceiling fell into the sanctuary, prohibiting further use of the space until repairs were made. There was a silver lining to the setback, however. The resulting repairs yielded an interesting clue to the church's early years: it revealed the original colors - light green, dark green, red, black and gold – of the ornate stenciling on the sanctuary walls. These original colors were brighter and lighter than those in the stencilled designs parishioners had looked at for years, which had darkened with an application of varnish and the passage of time.

The discovery put to rest the mystery of why the stencil colors on the church's pipe organ, which hadn't darkened, were different from those on the walls. To aid in the artistic side of the project, the church contacted R. Michelson Galleries, located on Main Street across from the church, and Kruta, an expert at restoring historical buildings, who was brought in to reconstruct the decorations in their 130-year-old color scheme.

Kruta, who was born in Prague, Czechoslavakia, where he studied large-scale art conservation, has restored castles, churches and murals in the Czech Republic and Germany. Kruta moved to the United States in 1999, and has been working on his own original paintings in addition to conservation projects since 2001.

Though best known for their Main Street fine art gallery, it's not unusual for the staff at Michelson to get involved with restoration projects, said Michelson's manager Paul Gulla. The gallery routinely offers commercial restoration services and advice, and in the past its staff has worked with institutions like the Williston Northampton School in Easthampton and Amherst College, as well as private collections, on everything from oil paintings to bronze sculpture, said Gulla in a recent interview at the gallery. But the First Churches Project is one of the biggest undertakings they've taken on, scale-wise, he added. "It's certainly the biggest single project," said Gulla. "It's right here in town. It's such an institution."

High-level work On a recent Monday afternoon, Kruta was unfazed by the precarious nature of his work, whether walking among the plastic-draped pews or perched 10-to-20 feet up the wall on the scaffolding, paintbrush in hand. The four conservators, each positioned at different points along the wall, were slowly working their way around the church's interior, each adding new details to the stenciling as they went. They started with the banner's background color - a thick strip of light green against the neutrally-colored wall. Next, came the stencil, a mylar sheet with a few rounded shapes cut out of it, which was used as a template to form shapes on the wall using dark green paint. Then, hand-painted flourishes in red were added to the stencilled shapes. Eventually, bands in black and gold would be added at the top and bottom of the banner and the design would slowly come into relief - a series of crosses surrounded by artful squiggles. The crosses, says Kruta, come last, when gold leaf is applied to the design. On this Monday, Veronika Kruta was adding the red to one banner, standing atop scaffolding some 40 feet in the air; Kruta and his son are working on another about 10 feet higher; and Garvey is on the ground, applying the early green stages to a banner closest to the floor. The three different banners that rim the sanctuary were getting their pre-gold leaf treatment simultaneously. The artists worked with efficiency and care, and no one's fallen off the scaffolding yet.

On target Alison Kriviskey, one of First Churches 250 parishioners and a member of its Capital Campaign, said in a recent phone interview that the church plans to raise $2 million to pay for the project. As of July 1, she said, some $1.4 million had been raised, from donations given by about 90 parishioners, as well as by some 200 community members not affiliated with the church, along with grants from the Massachusetts Historical Commission, the Northampton Community Preservation Committee, the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts and the Xeric Foundation. The project has received widespread community support, in part, because the church provides space for a variety of activities and meetings, said the Rev. Peter Ives, the church's minister, including those by social justice-oriented groups and Alcoholics Anonymous. "It's a meetinghouse for the city of Northampton and the Pioneer Valley," said Ives. Money issues aside, everyone involved with the project is optimistic it will be finished by its target date in November. "There's a good chance that it will be done by Thanksgiving," said Ives. The project is ahead of schedule so far - its reopening was originally slated for Christmas. But if the sanctuary is ready by November, services will start up again with a Thanksgiving Mass, he said. If community members are interested in contributing to the project, checks can be made out to the First Churches Capital Campaign and sent to First Churches Capital Campaign, 129 Main St., Northampton. Questions can be directed to Campaign Coordinator Gina-Louise Sciarra at 584-5121.