40.0°

The work - a red dog standing on a green field, barking at two UFOs floating in a light-orange sky - showed up in Juneau without a frame. For months, it's been dangling from a nail in the wall, above Stuebner's laundry.

Sunday afternoon, Smith and Stuebner brought the painting to McPhetres Hall, where Denver painting conservator Carmen Bria, owner of the Western Center for the Conservation of Fine Arts, led a free, four-hour presentation on restorative techniques.

Bria, one of the few painting restoration experts working in the West, has been coming to Alaska since 1979. The WCCFA is in the process of restoring six antique Frances Davis paintings from Holy Trinity Church.

The crowd of two dozen brought in 12 paintings Sunday for Bria to examine. The Haring work stood out. Most were landscapes or classical portraits.

"I'm pretty sure it's authentic," Smith said of the Haring work. "I mainly wanted to know what I needed to do in terms of framing it. I just want to make sure that I preserve it properly."

"To make sure it's not going to lose more paint, the most important thing is to improve the structure, the stability," Bria said.

Juneau artist Pua Maunu wanted advice on a landscape painting that had been hanging in Northern Light Church. The piece was covered with mysterious chalk marks that turned out to be a hidden purple layer. The work had evidently been stored behind a Coke machine, leaving it with horizontal scrapes.

Susie and Ron Seator wanted advice on a Sidney Laurence work which seemed to radiate with a Fred-Machteanz-like ultramarine glow. Bria, who has restored more than 300 Laurence works, believed it to be a photomechanical reproduction which had faded and lost its yellows and reds.

Another Juneau artist, Dorinda Skains, brought in a few of the paintings she salvaged from the August 2004 fire that destroyed downtown's Skinner Building. Her gallery was destroyed. "Five Yellow Apples" was left with a layer of soot and grime. Bria suggested a few cleaning methods.

"When I say clean, I'm not talking about a sponge or a Brillo pad," he said. "We're talking about removing dirt, removing grime, removing varnish and old retouching.

"Paintings can be so different," he said. "If a painting is more than 40 years old, it's going to have some loss. Most of all, we want to stabilize these works so they'll last for a long, long time and hopefully forever."

Bria and the WCCFA have started cleaning two of the six Davis paintings. The restoration project is estimated to cost between $23,000 and $27,000 - approximately $16,000 to $17,000 of which has been raised so far. A dinner and arts auction is planned for 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 22, at McPhetres Hall to help raise more money.