Restoration team at work

Daily news - August 12, 2001

By Sabrina Decker

Using a specially treated cotton swab, Nathan Zakheim gently touches the surface of the 1942 mural, careful to remove only grime and not pigment from the City Hall artwork. It's admittedly tedious work for some, but a labor of love for Zakheim, whose family history of craftsmen spans three generations. His father, Bernard Zakheim, had studied with famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera who contributed to the artwork in San Francisco's Coit Tower. And son Kuvaleshaya, better known as Kuva, is part of the restoration crew - working with his dad on the "Four Freedoms" mural in Burbank's council chambers. "No one would say this is beautiful now," Zakheim said of the 12-foot-high mural by artist Hugo Ballin. "But you can see beauties begin to come up, and that is our reward." Zakheim is a master of craftsman, an artist who has trained each of seven children the craft of restoring a fine piece of artwork - and who prides himself on this more than any other accomplishment. "We're working the way people worked hundreds of years ago, we're working together as a family," he said. The mural - which Zakheim explains, with a shake of his head, is "unbelievably filthy" - was uncovered this May as part of the chamber's 250,000 refurbishment. Prior to that, it was partially covered by side curtains and an acoustic drop ceiling that cut off the heads of the mural's four main figures. "Four Freedoms" depicts freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of want and freedom from fear, as enunciated by Winston Churchill and President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1941 Atlantic Charter. Zakheim crew is being paid $40,000 to restore this and a second Ballin mural, "Burbank Industry," that hung for years over the main lobby at City Hall. The restored "Freedoms" project is scheduled for unveiling in mid-September. After the surface dust and pollutants are carefully stripped away, the mural will be treated with a removable varnish to bring up the colors, Zakheim said. Any wrinkles and tears will then be repaired, loose spots remounted and paint retouched before the work is reglazed. "At first you're scared when you begin working on a piece - scared you'll go too far or strip away too much - but then you relax," said Kuva Zakheim, 21, who's worked the last 10 summers with his father. And once the restoration gets under way, the experts say, the result can be startling. "When you see a painting as dirty as this, it has formed a skin, a patina, like antiquing. "It looks more realistic, because you stop seeing the individual brush strokes. It's like night and day, the difference between a dirty surface and a clean one."