INTERVIEWS
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Dick
Labertew
Lead Restoration Painter
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JACK
SHEPARD INTERVIEWS DICK LABERTEW FOR STORY ON CAPITOL RENOVATION
Interviewed February 14, 2000
JACK
SHEPARD: Tell me what your job is here at the Capitol.
DICK
LABERTEW: My job here is to restore all the decorative painting
on the plastered walls and ceiling.
JACK
SHEPARD: You've been at this for a number of years?
DICK
LABERTEW: I first worked in here in 1971. I was right out
of apprentice school. I remember coming over here with a guy from
the company I worked for. And he took us into the Auditor's Office
and up to one of the ceilings. He said, "This is what we're going
to do; we're going to restore this ceiling." I looked up there,
and all I could see were these hundreds of colors and patterns.
It was pretty exciting.
JACK
SHEPARD: But as far as working at the Capitol full time, when
did that start?
DICK
LABERTEW: It started in 1979.
JACK
SHEPARD: So from 1979 until 2000, you've been working at restoring
these walls and ceilings back to their original condition?
DICK
LABERTEW: Yes, 20 years.
JACK
SHEPARD: And do you expect it to be finished pretty soon?
DICK
LABERTEW: I wouldn't say pretty soon. A lot of it was "painted
out."
JACK
SHEPARD: Painted out? What do you mean by that?
DICK
LABERTEW: It was just completely painted out. They just painted
it out over the years. Some of it was probably because of water
damage and cracking. Instead of repairing and restoring it back
then they just painted it out, probably because of cost reasons.
JACK
SHEPARD: They painted over all of these beautiful wall decorations?
And your job has been to find the originals and restore them.
DICK
LABERTEW: Right. First we have to find the designs
and the colors. If they didn't do a very good job of priming it,
or the primer didn't adhere to the original, we can go in and
scrape it off with razor blade scrapers. A lot of times that doesn't
work; a lot of times they did a good job. The adhesion is real
strong, so we have to use paint remover, chemical paint removers.
We go through the paint a layer at a time to find the original.
Of course that distorts the paint color. It causes a lot of problems.
But, we usually will dissect the paint then, look at it through
a lighted magnifier to get the original color.
JACK
SHEPARD: Do you feel like an explorer or a scientist when
you do that?
DICK
LABERTEW: Both. That's one of the fun parts of the job. That's
the exciting part of it. It's one of the most time consuming parts
of the job, too. We patch the plaster. We do all the not-so-fun
parts of the job too, you know, a lot of the dirty work. Some
people come in here and think, "Boy what a neat job. He gets to
put all these pretty designs on." But we have to do all the
dirty work, too.
JACK
SHEPARD: Explain the processes of getting the walls back to
the condition that they were in originally.
DICK
LABERTEW: In this room we actually scraped the whole room
down because the paint wasn't adhered that well. But when we did
get it scraped down we discovered that there were large sections
that were completely gone, probably from water damage. So the
first thing we have to find is the design, and we document all
our colors. We take tracings of all the designs, and then we go
from there. And we make new stencils. We match all the colors
by hand. And then we start re-applying them. A good part of the
work we do is stencil work. You cut out a stencil, and pounce
paint through it. For a lot of the intricate stuff you perforate
paper and pounce chalk through it. It makes an outline and then
you do all the free-hand stuff.
JACK
SHEPARD: And if there are more colors, there is more work
involved?
DICK
LABERTEW: Right. And there's such a variation in the patterns.
Some of them that look like they're really intricate and would
take a lot of time are quicker than the ones that look fairly
simple just because of the layout and getting everything to come
out precisely.
JACK
SHEPARD: It's not always paint is it?
DICK
LABERTEW: There's a lot of gold leaf in the building. It's
23-carat gold. And there are glazes, so it's not just wall paint.
JACK
SHEPARD: What are the most difficult parts of this job?
DICK
LABERTEW: There are a lot of difficult parts. Sometimes just
occupying an area and setting up scaffolding around people who
work here is difficult. The treasurer worked in here the whole
time we were here, underneath us. So we had to scaffold around
him, where we didn't interrupt his work schedule too.
JACK
SHEPARD: So you'd have to allow people to continue doing their
work?
DICK
LABERTEW: Right. It would be a lot easier for us if they could
just vacate the area.
JACK
SHEPARD: So were there special problems adapting today's materials
to work?
DICK
LABERTEW: Yes, a lot of the materials have changed. Like the
lead-based paint. We don't use lead-based paint anymore. We have
to give it maybe two or three coats where they got by with one
coat. So it's taken us a little more time to do it.
JACK
SHEPARD: What's been your impression of the work that was
done back then?
DICK
LABERTEW: Well, it's excellent workmanship. They had hundreds
of artists from all over the world working here. So, it's first
class as far as I'm concerned.
JACK
SHEPARD: You were impressed with the amount of time they must
have taken.
DICK
LABERTEW: They didn't cut any corners.
JACK
SHEPARD: How about you guys?
DICK
LABERTEW: We try to duplicate it as close as we can. The materials
are different; but as far as the workmanship, we're probably doing
it real close to how they were actually doing it. Different brushes
than what they probably used. The advantage they had over us is
there were a lot of them. Like in this particular room, they had
a foreman and I think five workers. When we did this we had three
people. We're down to two people now, so it takes us a little
longer.
JACK
SHEPARD: How did you know that they had all those guys?
DICK
LABERTEW: We found the names of the people that actually worked
in this office. There were five people working in here.
JACK
SHEPARD: Did it make you feel in any way different working
here as opposed to another building?
DICK
LABERTEW: Oh, sure, it really does. It's a one of a kind building.
It's special; it's for everybody. It's our heritage, so sure it
does. I think I'll probably realize that a little more when I
no longer work here, but yeah, it makes me proud.
JACK
SHEPARD: When do you think that will be? How much more work
do you plan to do here?
DICK
LABERTEW: It's a guestimate but I'm saying it will be probably
15 to 20 more years.
JACK
SHEPARD: So you've been working on it since '79.
DICK
LABERTEW: Full time
JACK
SHEPARD: Just a little over 20 years?
DICK
LABERTEW: Uh huh.
JACK
SHEPARD: You may have up to 20 more years?
DICK
LABERTEW: Right.
JACK
SHEPARD: It's going to represent a good healthy chunk of your
career.
DICK
LABERTEW: Oh, yes, it is. It's a big part of my life.
JACK
SHEPARD: What are you going to tell your grandchildren?
DICK
LABERTEW: It makes me proud to know that this is going to
be here for my kids and grandkids. It's a good feeling.
JACK
SHEPARD: What do you say to people who say, "They're spending
all this money rebuilding and restoring the Capitol."
DICK
LABERTEW: Well, I think it's money well spent. This is for
everybody. This is for the whole state. This is our heritage here.
Once this building's gone we're not going to get another one.
It's just not going to happen. It would just be too costly. This
had to have been a magnificent place. Can you imagine back in
1884, this huge building out in the middle of nowhere? They took
a lot of pride...a lot of pride. And we should keep that.
JACK
SHEPARD: Have you gotten some of your information from photographs?
DICK
LABERTEW: In this building we've been fortunate. We've found
most every design and color. We also do restoration at Terrace
Hill. Out there we did have to work from some photographs because
some of the plastered ceilings had been re-plastered so it was
actually gone. But here, we found everything. So we know it's
right.
JACK
SHEPARD: Why all this has been necessary? What are the reasons
that all this painting had to be done.
DICK
LABERTEW: Well, there are a lot of reasons. A lot of it has
been painted out. We don't actually know why; we're just speculating.
Maybe water damage, maybe they didn't want to spend the money
to restore it at that time. Maybe they didn't have the money.
JACK
SHEPARD: You're pretty proud when you can go back and you
can hardly tell where you've been.
DICK
LABERTEW: Exactly. People come in and they say, "Well, I can't
see where you've been working." That makes us feel good. That's
about the best compliment that they can give us.
JACK
SHEPARD: There are plenty of rooms that you spent two or three
months in?
DICK
LABERTEW: Oh sure. Usually we're in the rooms for a few months.
In this particular room, we were in here for over a year. A lot
of times we don't come back for a few months, and that's when
we really appreciate it. I'm kind of awestruck too, when I come
in this room and just take a look around and see the hundreds
of colors and the patterns. It keeps you coming back tomorrow.
JACK
SHEPARD: It seems like it'd take a pretty patient type of
person to work on this.
DICK
LABERTEW: There's no fast way to do it. You can't get in a
hurry; it just doesn't work. Some days are better than others.
It can be real frustrating at times, real frustrating.
JACK
SHEPARD: Will you describe the procedures that we're going
to be putting on tape today?
DICK
LABERTEW: We go in and put on the base coat. We have to let
that dry. And we'll come back with our stencil pattern the following
day. We have to let that dry. It's nothing fast. Take it one step
at a time. Sometimes there are two or three different stencils
to make one pattern. It's a slow process.
JACK
SHEPARD: And lots of times you're trying to weave it back
to the original pattern.
DICK
LABERTEW: Right. A lot of times a recreation is easier than
a restoration, because you have to be so precise. The paint colors
change over the years. I don't care what kind of paint you use,
they do. So a lot of times, even the paint that we actually put
on there three or four years ago will not match, so we have to
alter that to match. Yeah, a restoration is more difficult than
a recreation really and more time consuming in a lot of ways.
JACK
SHEPARD: There comes a point when you're looking at a room
that's got a lot of damage and you ask yourself, "Do I start
over, or do I salvage it?
DICK
LABERTEW: Right, if the original's still there we don't damage
it. It's going to be an ongoing process. I hope the state will
keep a restoration painter forever here, as long as the building's
here. They need one.
JACK
SHEPARD: Tell me about when you discovered these signatures
up there.
DICK
LABERTEW: We'd just set up the scaffold after we were starting
to clean the room down--we always clean it down first. And we
discovered these names up on a molding up there. You couldn't
see from the floor. But, that was pretty exciting. That was the
first time we'd ever seen the original designs. It says "In the
year 1885." so we knew that was the original names, so . yeah
that was pretty exciting. We find names all over . not the originals,
but people that have worked on the building. They might have been
the people that were coming in and just painting the walls out,
but a lot of times they leave their signature. It's kind of interesting
to find.
JACK
SHEPARD: You guys left your signatures in there?
DICK
LABERTEW: Sure we have. We varnished over the top of theirs
to try to preserve it a little longer, but yeah, we figure if
we're up in here for a year, year and a half, we deserve to put
our names up there too. So, yeah, we put 'em up there. Hopefully,
somebody else when they see it in a hundred years, they'll think
that's kind of exciting too.
