Preserving the past

As I walked through the back door of the quaint country church I was met with the scents of paint and solvents. A few more steps in and there he stood. A drop cloth was draped across the altar, cleaning rags in various stages of soiling, were lined up in rows. Jim Stathopoulos, a restoration artist, was just finishing up his current project: cleaning and restoration of  a 100-plus year old 12 foot tall oil painting that hangs behind the Altar of Swede Valley Lutheran Church in rural Ogden.

The project took him and his associate over eight hours to complete. Stathopoulos says the painting has aged very gracefully, but has sustained damage due to weather conditions. Changes in temperature and humidity he says are hard on them. The soft rags dipped in solvent (the mixture varies with each individual work) are used to remove foreign particles from the painting’s surface.

Gently, meticulously dabbing in the direction of the brush strokes he went over the painting. The process was repeated seven more times until the white rags showed no more signs of residue.

His small family business, Religious Arts Corporation, based out of Rock Island, Ill., specializes in restoration, preservation and painting of religious relics and churches.

He seldom finds himself at home though. His expertise is sought nationwide and even overseas. “There are fewer and fewer of us technicians,” says Staphapolous who learned under his father’s tutelage while growing up in Greece. “I loved to go with my father. Sometimes we’d go up in the mountains. My father would send a note to school. I would miss classes for weeks at a time.”

Read more in the Oct. 18, 2017 issue of The Ogden Reporter.

PHOTO ID: Restoration artist Jim Stathopoulos uses a shoebox lid as a makeshift pallet and touches up the paint speckles that found their way onto the canvas when the church’s interior was recently repainted. He takes care in duplicating the exact color and paint stroke.

   -Ogden Reporter photo by Kathy Pierce