[caption id="attachment_103848" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]
Preserving art, memories, and history - Top, left: Kevin Malanaphy’s work greets locals and visitors as they use the covered bridge and entices them to stop and bask in the beautiful view. Top, right: Art restorer Mike Foster meticulously cleaned, repaired, and repainted damaged areas on all ten panels of Malanaphy’s original work. PHOTOS BY CHRISTOPHER KELLEY[/caption]
It’s been almost two years since Nederland lost Kevin Malanaphy, a light that brightened the days of those who knew him when he was alive, and whose beautiful art brightens the lives of those who never met him.
“Tye-dye Kevin’s” original paintings perfectly depict the cadence of living in the mountains and, thanks to the efforts of those who knew him, with the expertise required to restore his work, those iconic panels can still be viewed today as one walks across Nederland’s Covered Bridge.
“You can see footprints on them already, and they’ve only been up for about a month,” Mike Foster said upon approaching the bridge. Foster, a fine arts restorer and owner of Hands of Time, who was good friends with Malanaphy, looked upon the restored art placed back where they belong.
Foster tells The Mountain-Ear that he expected the panels to get dirty, as the covered bridge is a favorite among visitors; a place for children to climb up and be astonished by the stream rushing below them, kicking their feet up against the panels as they marvel at Nederland’s natural beauty.
Malanaphy’s work depicts hills of lush green trees, sweeping vistas under a night sky full of twinkling stars, bright colors and a wide, zoomed out perspective that showcases the immense scope of mountain living in innocent, unpretentious strokes of the paintbrush.
His paintings were created from a place of love and reverence for the nature in which we are privileged to live, and were originally installed on the Covered Bridge without permission from the Town of Nederland.
“It was a different time here,” Foster began, detailing a more rugged Nederland in the late 90s, early 2000s. “He just painted them, cut and measured them to size, and put them up without anyone knowing, guerrilla style. And everyone felt that they looked so cool, so let’s keep them.”
But from listening to Foster describe his friend, who became his roommate the same day they first met due to Malanaphy’s vehicle dying in front of his apartment, making public art a clandestine activity was just Malanaphy’s style.
These panels were an illicit gift that the community quickly grew to appreciate, so much so that community organizations jumped at the opportunity to restore and preserve the artwork for generations of Nedheads to enjoy.
Danielle Crouse, local artist, of the Kaleidoscope Art Gallery, and Vice Chair on the Nederland Downtown Development Authority’s Public Art Committee, proposed the restoration project in 2022, and with the expertise of Mike Foster the sentimental pieces of art have been returned to their original glory.
“It’s replicating someone else’s artwork,” Foster says about the pressure of his job. “And some of these panels were completely destroyed; there was nothing left, just an outline of a mountain, so I’d have to repaint the entire thing.”
The process of restoration, regardless of the perceived value of the painting, is a very involved and expensive process. RestoringMalanaphy’sten4x8panels of plywood, cleaning the paintings, touching them up, repainting them, and then sealing and coating them, was a large undertaking, not just considering that Foster was repairing his friend’s work, but that he was the only one with the knowledge to do so.
Foster, when making and selling drums back in 1995, stumbled into a career in antique restoration when he struck up a conversation with a fellow McGuckin’s customer about which carving tools to buy. Foster, now having access to real tools as opposed to the handmade ones he had been using to make drums, quickly fell in love with his new path.
In 1999 Foster started his own antique restoration company, Hands of Time. He described his warehouse as being full of unknown treasures, which he jokingly compares to the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
“Beautiful pieces get chucked all the time, like 200-year-old furniture. My warehouse is full of things just thrown away; I have a Civil War-era cutting board that someone just gave me.”
For over a year Foster has toiled, saving the Town thousands of dollars by dedicating his own time to not only preserve Kevin’s art and his memory, but also to preserve an important piece of Nederland’s history and identity as a haven for artists.
“Radiation from the sun, damage from the wind, the snow, the heat, and all the sand; we are in the harshest environment for outdoor art,” Foster stated, explaining how the most important part to a Town displaying public art is the maintenance of that art.
Foster detailed his restoration process, beginning with spot cleaning the paintings with cotton swabs.
“It’s pulling the dirt off without any color, with literally the lightest touch. And if you see any color on your tip then you know you’re damaging the painting.”
“Once you clean them you can see the real damage,” Foster continues, explaining the meticulousness of retouching a painting, of respecting the brushwork of the original artist.
The plywood canvases also needed to be repressed and injected with a specific resin to avoid capillary action, which creates the surface tension that causes cracks in the wood.
Part of Foster’s restoration process was to invite members of the community to participate by setting some of the panels up at past Farmer’s Markets and letting people passing by contribute a few strokes of the paintbrush.
“They put (Kevin’s) ashes in the paint and all the people that knew him, all his friends came down to the Farmer’s Market and to Jazz and Wine Fest,” Foster says, suddenly hit by the impact of his own words. Such a gesture fits perfectly with the bright communal spirit that radiates from Kevin’s paintings, which, thanks to dedicated friends and caring locals, will live on.
And in terms of living on, Foster, who is now a member of the Public Art Committee, knows that with all of Nederland’s public art projects there will be a great need for art maintenance and restoration, and due to this Foster wishes to help keep the restorative process alive.
“I want to do some training sessions with people on this because I don’t want to be the only person who knows how to do this,” Foster said. “I’m eventually going to do workshops and show people in town, and kids too, how to do restoration, so that way I know it’s passed on because these are dying arts.”
As you walk through Nederland’s downtown and you round the corner past Crosscut to cross the creek, be sure to take your time on the Covered Bridge to soak in the views around you, as well as the loving creation, and restoration, of artwork celebrating those very views and the emotions that they stir.
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