¡Colores!; 305; Santero; Interview with Marie Romero Cash; Tape 5

See, I gave back a pen, isn't that a man? These would work. All right. That's a good way. Just click it.

Is it sticking? It's just sticking. Is it rolling? Okay, let's do that again. Just kind of want to go ahead and just walk out and then walk right back in. Okay, let me try one move. Let's do that again and I'll try one kind of following move.

There you go. Okay, say one. I don't know.

That's good. Let's do it one more time. If you actually turn around and go back, that'd be good. Okay, let's do it one more time just for insurance and if you could put it like right here, that would be good. It's a little bit more light. We're showing a little bit more. Great. Would it be possible? Would you mind? I know it's highly personal.

Okay, can we? Perfect. Let's get a close up of the candle waiting there. Can we do it again? Just a real light.

All these people are going to leave and they're not going to have any more tension. Okay, kind of stand in. Kind of that way just a little bit. Just kind of look around and just a little bit.

Okay, so keep rolling. Okay, so keep rolling. Could you look here just for just a second? Like maybe count to five. And then just gently turn around and walk back this way a little bit by the frame. It's good. Let's do it one more time without the phone.

Okay, yeah, same kind of thing. Just look at him for about a count of five seconds. You want to pick up the machine? Okay, I don't hear the machine. Right now we do. Okay. Okay, let's do it again.

Yeah, let me do one. I know what I'm working for. It's almost just the slightest. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Here's kind of what we kind of want to talk about. And it will just kind of experiment if you don't feel like you're going to get it right first thing.

Okay, the heck was it? Well, you can do it like four or five times. But look at me. Don't look at the camera. He's not actually here. Perfect. He's not actually here. I'll be very relaxed if I look at you then. Yeah, that's great. Let's take this in steps. Okay, what I want to know is what cruise is working on. Let's just take it kind of from the beginning. What is cruise working on? So we're going to talk about piece that cruise finished working. That's right. Yeah. And kind of what happened to it and all of that. So the question is, and if you can turn around and make it a complete sentence for me, so if I say what is cruise working on, you can say cruise is working on a, and then kind of go from there. That's okay. Okay. So you got ready? You nervous? Not you. Yeah, I don't know if it's going to come out right, but let's give it a try. I'm not nervous. That's good. Oh, sure. Yeah, you're not here. Yeah, he's not here.

Okay, what I kind of just want to know, you know, plain speaking, you know, what is cruise working on right now? Okay, cruise is working on a Santo that was damaged in a fire in a Maraudet in Northern New Mexico. And it was in a fire. And so this piece has been severely damaged by heat as well as so it fell out. And that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go back and see what is cruise working on right now. Okay, cruise is working on a Santo that came from a Maraudet in Northern New Mexico. It's been severely damaged by heat as well as soot fallout. And the treatment that cruise has been working on for approximately the last four weeks is to remove and salvage what is remaining of the original surface. The piece you're seeing today reflects the removal of that soot damage

the current state of preservation of the piece of the original surface. So go on. Well, that's great. So I go ahead and talk about the treatment. Yeah, let's go. Let's talk a little bit about that. About the conservation versus restoration. Yeah, let's go on. Let me rephrase this a little bit for you. If you could describe for me your philosophy and the museum's philosophy on preserving cultural artifacts. Thanks. That's a big question. So in other words, talking about conservation versus restoration. Maybe we can just bring it back down to human level. Let's describe a little bit more about how he took away the soot to everything. Well, I'll talk about that process a little bit. And then bring into it the whole difference between conservation and restoration. The treatment that we decided on for the Santo, the cruises treating,

is something where we are really taking away damage that has occurred to it. We're not making any overlay of our own work at this point in time. The treatment in removal of the soot involved taking away the damage to reveal what was there as a result of the fire, including the damage of the fire. And as you can see on this piece. I got to start that one over again because you don't have any close ups of this piece. Let's start with a statement of the piece was heavily damaged by the fire. The piece. I want to describe what I just did again. Just a little bit to close through. The piece being heavily damaged by the fire. Most of the damage was a deposit of soot and we didn't know the extent of the damage to the paint film.

We could see that the wood was still pretty much preserved on the piece. And so the intent of our treatment was to start out and take off all the soot to look at the remaining original surface that had been left intact. When that process was complete, we found that there really wasn't a lot of severe charring or damage on the soonto. And so that enabled us to go ahead and not alter in any way the original surface. The differences, you know, perhaps that are viewed as a result of being damaged is in the facial area and on the hands, the parts of the soonto that were exposed to the fallout are slightly darker and you can see that on the piece. From that point on, it was of interest to us to again stabilize the piece.

We talked with the person or contact with the Marada to verify if the visual appearance of the soonto was acceptable to the armonos in the community. He insured us that it was and so we went ahead and completed a restorative process on this piece. The piece originally had quite a high sheen. We have photographs of this piece before the damage. And so what Cruz did in the treatment was he added a layer of varnish to resemble the original sheen of the piece and then began cosmetic repair. Again, not restoring, not over painting, but actually just taking care of losses that occurred and bringing them back to an aesthetic continuity for the piece. So it could be acceptable to the community again.

I'll stop there because it's getting long. Just do this. I'm serving rather than like a full restoration kind of attitude or philosophy. I'm going to go to the Hispanic culture and maybe you can start something. Thank you.