Most people who walk into the U.S. Post Office in Ravenna don't know they're walking past a portrait of American history.
More than 70 years ago, a painter was commissioned to create a mural on the post office walls as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal reform. In honor of the New Deal's 75th anniversary, which will begin in 2008, the Ravenna post office has been selected to have its mural restored by Parma Conservation, a company based in Chicago.
The mural, titled Early Ravenna, originally was painted on July 1, 1936 by Clarence Holbrook Carter. During the New Deal, Roosevelt looked to restore the morale and economy of a deflated American people. Post offices such as Ravenna's were constructed to provide jobs, and the artwork on their walls was meant to be a free gallery for the public. Between 1934 and 1943, more than 1,200 murals were made for the United States Postal Service.
Most post office murals that were part of the program represented the time period, much like Carter's Early Ravenna. Conservators Elizabeth Kendall and Peter Schoenmann are doing their best to revive Carter's work without harming the artist's vision.
"This is a sensitive painting," Schoenmann said. "All paintings are different like patients; there's not one particular thing that will be good for all of them."
A conservator's primary job, unlike a painter, is to represent someone else's vision as accurately as possible without making changes.
"A conservator has to be knowledgeable of all the different types of material," Schoenmann said. "If you weren't knowledgeable on what to use, you could do more damage than good."
Parma Conservation was called to the project by Dallan Wordekemper, the preservation officer of the U.S. Postal Service. It is Wordekemper's job to make sure all post office murals are cared for.
"He does an excellent job to make sure they're restored properly and professionally," Kendall said.
Schoenmann already is noticing differences in the portion of art they've already worked on. He and Kendall want to diminish the flat appearance time has given the mural.
"This is a dimensional painting; if you have a veil of grime over the picture, you lose some dimension," he said. "The reason we want to clean the mural is so we can recapture the artist's vision."
The artist's vision was one of expertise. Carter, a Portsmouth, Ohio native, attended the Cleveland Institute of Art and taught at many renowned colleges.
"They only wanted the best artists to represent federal buildings," Schoenmann said.
Kendall hopes the restoration will garner praise for the mural. Many people never realized there was a painting in the post office, according to Kendall. They thought she was painting it for the first time as they watched her restoring it.
"People tend to just go in the post office and never really look up, but now they'll notice it," Kendall said.