In an old building, wear and tear happens everywhere - including the walls. The Capitol’s Decorative Artist, Anthony Cairo, maintains the beauty of the building’s nine acres of decorative artwork by regularly touching up areas of the wall and ceiling paint that need attention.
Cairo’s latest project was to restore the walls of the Senate cloakroom. A new cabinet was recently built for the space, and the removal of a marble backsplash to accommodate the new piece left the bottom portion of the walls’ decorative paint design in need of repair. This included over half of the swirling motif that runs horizontally around the room. In order to restore the area, Cairo had to recreate both the stencil and the paint colors used in the design.
He began by finding the most intact area of the motif, on which he would base his stencil. Luckily, he noted that behind a large mirror, the original stencil lines still existed and were in good shape. He snapped a photo of the original design and turned it into a digital rendering, which he then cut out from a thin piece of mylar. This modern approach is common in decorative art restoration today, as it is more efficient and tends to be more precise than hand-cutting a stencil.
Once his stencil was prepared, Cairo then matched his paint colors. He describes this step as the most creative part of each project, as he must find ways to match the tones and values of the paint colors as accurately as possible. Using acrylic paint, Cairo mixed different colors into white until he found the perfect match. He then took the result to a paint supplier, who translated it into a custom acrylic paint color that could be reproduced again and again. With every new paint created in this manner, Cairo makes a swatch to store in the Capitol’s ongoing inventory. This important step ensures that future decorative artists will be able to follow in his footsteps – one of many ways that the Capitol seeks to preserve the past in a future-oriented manner.
With stencil and paint in hand, Cairo then proceeded to work on the cloakroom walls. He first patched holes in the wall using a joint compound, then sealed the wall with an acrylic primer. Next, he painted the light blue base color onto the wall, up to the point at which the paint had been damaged. When he reached the stenciled area, Cairo applied his newly made mylar stencil to the wall with a thin coat of adhesive spray. This method allows the stencil to stick entirely to the wall yet be removed cleanly once the painting is finished. Cairo applied the darker blue paint to the wall using a small, mostly dry paint roller – his preferred tool for stenciling, as it allows for even surface coverage with minimal bleeding around the edges of the design.
As he moved across the wall, Cairo cleaned his stencil between each use. This practice helps avoid paint buildup on the stencil and keeps the edges of the design clean. Finally, he outlined and touched up the stenciled design using a freehand technique. The process of restoring the cloakroom took several days – about five full workdays in all – for the artist to complete. While the Senate enjoys their newly painted cloakroom, Cairo has already begun his next project: woodgraining several doors to look like new walnut.
