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An Interview with Rock Art Conservator Constance Silvers Rebecca: What made you want to be a Conservator? Constance Silvers: When I was going to college I thought it was very sad that all of the beautiful old buildings were being torn down to put up unattractive new buildings, and so I became very interested in historic buildings, and one thing led to another and I decided I wanted to be involved in preserving beautiful old things. That's basically how I became a Conservator. Rebecca: How did you find out about Sego Canyon? Constance Silvers: I did a restoration project of another rock art site near here and at that time Julie Howard, who was the archaeologist for the Bureau of Land Management in Moab, brought me to Sego Canyon and showed me the site. We both agreed that it was a beautiful and important site. She explained to me that she was going to try to acquire it for the government, and that's how I found out about Sego. Julie Howard brought me here to look at it and she wanted some ideas at the time on how to preserve the site. Rebecca: Which type of damage is hardest to repair? Constance Silvers: The hardest damage to repair is where people have chiseled their names into the stone. It's almost impossible to repair that kind of damage: you have to retouch it with colors. In what we call a raking light, which is a strong sunlight coming from an angle, you always get a shadow of the chiselled letters, and that's very hard to repair. Rebecca: What are you doing when you spray stuff on the pictograph after taking off the paint? Constance Silvers: I don't spray anything on the pictograph. I don't think that it's good to spray any coatings on rock art because the stone is still living, the stone reacts, it has water inside of it that has to come out through evaporation. It can be very dangerous to put a coating on that could cause water to build up in the stone, so I don't spray anything on it. Rebecca: How does a person get trained to do this work? Constance Silvers: Well, you have to train first as a fine art conservator. I was trained and did most of my fine art conservation in Italy. I did my conservation, fine arts conservation, training at Italian schools in Rome, and I have a second masters degree in the preservation of historic architecture from Columbia University in New York. You learn how to restore paintings and sculpture because the same techniques that are used to restore painting and outdoor sculpture, especially mural paintings, would be used to improve rock art panels. Rebecca: Do you study about the people whose art work you repair? Constance Silvers: Not very much. I usually don't have time. Rebecca: How do you fix bullet holes? Constance Silvers: Well, the real heavy bullet holes, the ones that are at least 2 inches deep, I put in an artificial stone that would be compatible with the original stone. Rebecca: Do you make sketches or photos of the rock art before you begin? Constance Silvers: Yes, all conservation work has to be documented with photographs before, during, and after treatment. Sometimes I'll make sketches but usually there really isn't enough time to do sketching, but I take extensive photographs and at this site, I'm also making a video tape of this treatment. Rebecca: What do you do if you mess up on taking off the carved graffiti? Constance Silvers: That's a good question. In a few areas I've worked too fast and I've actually started to put retouching material on a petroglyph and a little bit of original carving, and in that case I have had to go back and retouch my retouching to make it look like the original stone. I haven't messed up too much on this one, that I know of. Oh, and let me just add one thing. Before I started, Julie Howard and I went through the panel and placed little red dots on areas that we weren't sure whether it was a rock art or graffiti. I left those areas untouched. Rebecca: What is the difference between graffiti and rock art? Constance Silvers: Well, the rock art is art that was painted by the Native Americans and the graffiti is just random damage by people who are modern people, so they are totally different things usually.
Rebecca: Why did you adopt this site? Margaret Patterson: I live three miles in the town from where the site is of Sego Canyon. I've lived here for 19 years. I joined an amateur archaeology club in Moab when it first started, and that was how I met the archaeologists. This site up here was originally on private land. It wasn't government land, but the petroglyphs were vandalized real bad. Rebecca: So they are vandalized all the time? Margaret Patterson: It just seemed to me that there was an awful lot of people around that didn't seem to care about it anymore. They thought there was a few names and scratches on them, so it didn't matter if you put a whole bunch more on them, and so I thought there must be somebody in this world that thinks differently than that, and some way we can do something about this. Rebecca: Do you think you've made a difference? Margaret Patterson: Yeah, and it is something everyone can do if they're interested. Contact professionals and volunteer for some favorite place that they like to see, or some place that's near them and just go out and check on it, pick up trash, see if there is any new graffiti added, and explain site etiquette to people, which is very, very important. Rebecca: What's site etiquette? Margaret Patterson: Okay, lot's of people don't know how to behave around an archaeological site or pictographs or petroglyphs. They don't know that they shouldn't touch them. They aren't trying to destroy things, but they don't know any better, because they know a little bit but they've never read up on how they should treat a site, that they shouldn't put their hands on the wall. They shouldn't put their own name on the wall or do anything that could damage the rock art. Just look at it, take pictures, and enjoy it.
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