Karl Prantl

Although our focus this year – the first season of conservation – was the 9 concrete sculptures and not the other 7 marble ones, we took advantage of a marvelous unexpected opportunity!

Florin Stejac is a renowned stone sculpture conservator from Romania, and he happened to be the visiting summer resident of the Salem Art Works in Upstate New York. So we snatched him away and along with sculptor Peter Lundberg, cleaned and repaired our most treasured SOTH sculpture, ‘Stones for Meditation’ by Karl Prantl, the founder of the International Sculpture Symposium movement.

This was a challenging restoration. Not only was the marble heavily soiled by decades of mold and dirt, but worst of all, incised graffiti was so deep it had to be filled with epoxy. Then the epoxy had to be pigmented to precisely match the marble.

Before

After

Florin Stejac at work

After they finished, a cover was erected to preserve the cleaning and repair until the sculpture is moved. The current location is a closed rest area so it is planned to be moved next year to an active one on I-89 southbound in Randolph.

Prantl Sculpture Protected

Then the best surprise of all! Karl Prantl’s daughter Katharina Prantl, visited from her home in Austria to inspect the amazing work by Peter and Florin.

Katherina Prantl at her father's sculpture in Vermont

Left to right: Byron Breese, Peter Lundberg, Robert Hannum, and Katharina Prantl

Protective cover for Prantl

It’s was a wonderful first season – 6 warm months! – and now that cold weather has arrived we’ve wrapped-up the restoration of our Sculpture on the Highway project until the weather warms again in May. We exceeded our goals for this year – here’s what we did.

As many as 9 talented people endured our overly hot and humid summer including a local high school student, a professional photographer, a graduate studies intern, and a marble conservator from Romania! We are on-time and on-budget.

Specifically, we completed the cleaning of all 9 concrete sculptures as planned, and although we fell short of completing all the repairs – a bit more to do on 2 – we also completed the restoration of our most valuable and damaged marble sculpture, ‘Stones for Meditation’ by Karl Prantl.

Florin Stejac restoring Prantl

Plus, the marvelous Ambassadors at our Guilford Welcome Center cleaned their marble sculpture.

This marble work was not expected until next year, so overall, we are ahead of the game and well on our way to completing the project as planned by the end of next summer.

Though the hands-on work is done for the season, work continues through the winter. I’m documenting all the products and methods we used in order to guide future maintenance. And our Vermont Agency of Transportation friends are planning their exciting involvement that begins next season – pouring foundations, moving sculptures, and improving all the rest areas where the sculptures are located.

Phew! It’s been a busy and exhilarating project, and thanks to everyone involved.

Two Surprises

Season One Success