[Clipping: Hanging Tough, Says Muralist] Part: 1 of 2
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TOIL
Says Muralist
Muralist Michael Schnorr
has nightmares about epoxy
clue. Schnorr, a Southwestern
College art professor and most
prolific of the Chicano Park
:nural painters, sees himself
hanging from the basket of a
ruckbed-mounted
cherry-picker" extended fifty
eet in the air. He's grasping a
Ber-foot-square sheet of
polyester-weave fabric that's
lapping wildly in the wind and
he's trying to wallpaper it to the
Concrete bridge pillar before
ie epoxy dries.
That's what Schnorr and four
-her artists might be doing
next month when they hang
heir fifty-foot-high mural
depicting the life of Mexican
folk hero Pedro Gonzales
alongside other artworks
corning the pillars of the
SCoronado Bay Bridge in
Chicano Park. Schnorr decided
to design the mural after
watching the televised
broadcast last fall of a locally
produced documentary on the
life of eighty-eight-year-old
Pedro Gonzales, a San Ysidro
resident and former cohort of
Mexican revolutionary Pancho
Villa. Rather than paint the
mural directly on the bridgelife will be drawn
pillar, Schnorr will try a ncw
technique developed by a
French muralist: each of the
five panels depicting a scene inSchnorr talked with chemists
around the country about what
glues would best bond the
polyester canvas to the case-
hardened concrete pillar. ThisI
0Mural site
-np cave canvas
using crayon-size oil-paint
sticks. The completed canvases
will then be glued, one above
the other, to the bridge pillar.2 MARCH 1 1984
month he mounted two
swatches of the canvas on a
pillar: both pieces are secured
with one-step nonepoxy glues.
one of which is often used to
glue Astroturf to concrete. He 's
testing three other glues -
including two epoxies - on
the wall of his Imperial Beach
studio, and is searching for
other test samples. Later this
month he'll see which adhesive
holds the best by trying to pull
off the sample swatches with
pliers. Several chemists and
experts at the Balboa Art
Conservation Center in Balboa
Park have recommended the
epoxies, but because those
glues require mixing, are more
volatile, and probably dry
faster, Schnorr says they 'd also
be more difficult to work with.
"It'd just be heaven if one of
the one-step glues works best,"
the artist says. "Then my only
worry would be whether we
could roll on the glue with
rollers, or if we have to hire a
plasterer to trowel it on."
Once the technical problems
are solved, Schnorr says the
new technique will make the
art form less restrictive and will
be a godsend to his more
talented but acrophobic
colleagues. "Some of them are
great artists," he explains.
"But when they get fifty feet in
the air, their knees freeze
together, they turn pink with
fear, and they can't paint an
apple."
--P.K.
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Reference the current part of this Clipping.
Parlee, Lorena, 1945-2006. [Clipping: Hanging Tough, Says Muralist], clipping, March 1, 1984; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2016002/m1/1/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.