YOU ARE THE STAR SHINES AGAIN IN HOLLYWOOD

Thomas Suriya's You Are the Star mural, Wilcox at Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood.

Thomas Suriya's popular Hollywood mural, You are the Star, received the final touch of its recent rennovation. A Mural Conservancy team under the direction of Nathan Zakheim installed Suriya's two new panels, replacing the badly worn plywood panels that were part of the original painting. Suriya executed the new panels in his New Mexico studio during 1995, shipping them back to Los Angeles for MCLA to complete the job. A Soluvar varnish, applied during the summer, already reaffixed the original protective coating, and the sacrificial coating service was subsequently put in place to guarantee that this landmark work will be around for a looong time.

THE PROBLEMS WITH URETHANE
Part 1: A Dramatization

By Nathan Zakheim

Approximately ten years ago, it became the fashion to coat outdoor murals with a newly developed urethane emulsion coating that was touted to be a "cure" for graffiti. The main selling point of this coating was the fact that in was virtually indestructible, did not succumb to the usual hydrocarbons such as toluene, acetone, lacquer thinner, MEK etc. that are the usual solvent components of most marking pens and spray can paint. Certainly the idea of a "suit of armor" that could withstand the worst that graffiti vandals could dish out had a certain appeal to frustrated artists who had become accustomed to seeing their finely wrought work executed under physically dangerous and fumigatiously unpleasant circumstances wiped out by a few arrogant passes of a 98 cent can of fifth class hot rod primer.

Since urethane cannot be dissolved in most substances known to humankind, it would seem that the final and most enduring mural protection had finally arrived courtesy of the large chemical companies that had already developed an awesome array of acrylic products (Products that included the vulnerable polymer "Rhoplex" emulsions used for mural paints as well as the harsh solvent-based acrylic monomers used for spray can paint). In the battle to the death between monomers and polymers, urethane surely seemed the shining armour in which the knights of future muraldom were destined to ride.

Alas! who could have predicted the fatal and tragic flaw of mural protective hubris! As graffiti vandals gnashed their collective teeth in frustrated rage at the ineffectiveness of their impotent spray cans as a means of permanently disfiguring governmentally sanctioned public art, urethane, the kindly friend of artist and art aficionado alike began to turn in the flaky gruesome fashion of "Friendly" alien monsters in an Ed Wood film.

First, the trusting artists stood agape as the treacherous substance began to yellow in the Ultra-Violet radiance of the sun! Helplessly, they watched their vivid hues sink into ghastly dull browns and greys. Then the treacherous urethane began to separate from the mural paint itself, much as the skin molts on a snake. Those with strong nerves would wait in the heat of day and the cold of night; braving rains and frosts to gaze with horror-stricken eyes on the minute and almost imperceptible crackling of the paint as it loosened first in pin-head little bubbles, then in patches and sheets, taking the precious final glazes and color areas with it as a stain. Now, a leprous white crept over the mural composed of de-laminated urethane film.

Then came the rains, bringing liquefied smog and grime, oozing beneath the leprous coating, impacting the fractured mural paint, gathering in impacted toxic globs, seething with inherent venom and petrification. Ah! the secret life of mural paint! First hot, then cold, light then dark, loose, then tight, wet, then dry whipped by rain, parched by sun, occasionally gouged by the bumper of an errant car. Using stop-frame photography like Disney dramatizations of an opening flower, they would seem to writhe! All in the thrall of Ultra-Violet light: the great killer of transparent coating film! From a microscopic view, we see the thickness of the film, following the contours of the mural paint and wall in a lumpy and ungainly way; sometimes thick, sometimes thin. The deadly rays of Solar Attack plunge through the surface of the film, only to be repelled by the surface on the mural paint side! Particles of light bouncing back and forth between the twin surfaces of the urethane film like nuclear ping-pong balls begin to smash the helpless and vulnerable molecules in their way. Accomplishing what no solvent dare attempt, they ruthlessly and indiscriminately side-swipe first electrons, then neutrons, then photons breaking down the integrity of their famous and reputed bond. Like cannon balls, crushing the fortifications of some ancient castle, cracks and fissures begin to form, and tired chemical bonds sigh and gradually release their hold. Heat and cold cause molecular tensioning within the urethane film itself; a "rigor mortis chemicus" of atrophying molecular chains. Stiff as mummified arms and legs of some ancient creature lost in the swirling mists of time, the film creaks like a mummy newly disturbed, and shrinks stiffly and rigidly across the minute voids it used to fill. If one had tiny ears and plenty of time, one could hear the crackling of the surface as these loose and brittle pin-head spots incrementally grow.

Moving back to a viewer's stance from the intense drama occurring microscopically within the coating of the mural wall, the saddened viewer simply sees the mural covered with whitish or translucent spots and blotches. He probably does not see them grow.

Happily, although impossible to remove, urethane "protective" coatings gradually fall off by themselves in the fullness of time. Of course, they do not leave willingly. They take whatever paint layers with them that they can before loosening and falling away in sheets.

Of course, science can step in, with wetting agents, surfactants, and bristle brushes for loosening the film. Perforating pinpricks of pattern wheels can accelerate the access of deionized water charged with loosening agents applied by trained and skillful hands.

Challenged by water after being loosened by time, the coating falls away readily enough, an ignominious ending for a substance resistant to the strongest chemicals known to man!