There is a 19th-century ceremonial fan made from an eagle's wing and leather in the Native American Gallery at the Historic Arkansas Museum in Little Rock that seems to float in its Plexiglass case.
The fan, part of the exhibit "We Walk in Two Worlds: The Caddo, Quapaw and Osage People of Arkansas," looks like it's suspended by wire. Look closer, though, and you can see a small rod that holds the artifact in place, hidden by the tassels hanging from the fan's handle.
There is an artfulness in the presentation of this piece of history.
The person who created the mount and display, along with several others in this gallery, is Andy Zawacki, the museum's object conservator.
Around the museum and its grounds, Zawacki's handiwork is ubiquitous. The period-correct furniture in the historic buildings around the museum, the re-creation of newspaperman William Woodruff's original printing press, beds, doors, shelves, counters, tables -- he made much of it and more.
After 38 years with the museum, the 65-year-old Zawacki will retire June 28.
"When you're 40 you've got all this energy," he says last month in a second-floor conference room at the museum. "Then you hit 60 and the energy level starts to drop a little bit. Right now, I'm good from about 7 a.m.-3 p.m. It's getting hard to function."
He's joking, at least partly. After spending a couple of hours with him on a Friday afternoon last month, the 6-foot, 4-inch-tall Zawacki, clad in a colorful Hawaiian shirt, showed no signs of lagging as we followed him around the museum, its outbuildings and his shop.
Swannee Bennett, director and chief curator of the museum, was on the staff when Zawacki was hired in 1981.
"He has been a godsend," Bennett says. "He's a true Renaissance man. He's more than just an object conservator. He's more than a fellow
that can work on furniture or ceramics. He's developed a skill set with fragile papers, he's become a machinist, he's the best welder we have on staff."
Former museum director Bill Worthen was the person who hired Zawacki.
Worthen says one of the things that struck him most was Zawacki's "deep familiarity with wood, and we're talking about on a molecular level. That struck me as remarkable, and he also seemed to me to be a man of steady habits."
Talking about what brought him to this line of work, the mustachioed Zawacki says: "I would have been OK in production management and forest products, but this was just more interesting. You're doing something different every day, and you have these fun projects, unlike industry, which is not so fun."
Zawacki is from Madison, Wis. His father was a professor of Slavic languages at the University of Wisconsin and his mother, who grew up in Chicago, spoke Polish until she was 14.
He starting working with wood as a child and built his first boat when he was 12.
Zawacki attended the University of Wisconsin and the University of Minnesota, earning a degree from the latter in forest products production management in 1977 and then traveled to Poland, where he spent nearly two years as an apprentice in the wooden artifacts arm of a program that focused on the conservation of cultural property.
After returning home in 1979, he sent out about 90 letters to museums around the country, looking for a job.
One of those that replied was the Arkansas Territorial Restoration, as the Historic Arkansas Museum was then known. It wasn't a job offer, at least not yet. They had a position, but there wasn't any money to pay for it.
About a year later, the funding was in place and Zawacki packed his tools and headed south. The museum was a much smaller operation back then.
"Our [historic] houses had furniture in them, but some of it was kind of coming apart because of the humid conditions," he says. "We didn't have the galleries like we have now, so there really wasn't the opportunity to exhibit the collection that much."
Besides building items for exhibits and the buildings, Zawacki says his job as object conservator is to "preserve the artifacts for as long as possible."
That includes controlling light levels and relative humidity where the objects are stored or displayed.
"For works on paper and textiles, light levels are important because a lot of the dye used in historic textiles are light sensitive. If you leave them on display too long they will fade out."
Then there is the consolidation of wooden artifacts, some of which can be centuries old.
In an email, Zawacki explains the consolidation process.
"Often wooden artifacts begin to lose elements due to glue line failures or accidents that affect the surface finish. Some damage is structural and some cosmetic. Consolidation refers to stabilizing existing elements, re-attaching loose veneers, re-gluing broken joints ... grime removal without removing the finish ... . We want to save the original material as much as possible because it is a 'document' of the materials and techniques of construction of the period in which it was made."
Installing exhibits -- like building brass mounts for objects -- is another part of his work, and somewhere in the late 1990s, he began matting and framing works on paper.
"When it's time for an exhibit, the two dimensional objects go in very quickly. We have standardized frames and we have the glass already cut. The three dimensional objects often need mounts that hold them in such a way that the object isn't damaged."
He remembers having to build a mount to support a seven-foot-long folding Bowie knife borrowed from the State Historical Society of Wisconsin for a 2013 exhibit.
"Geez, it weighed 35 pounds or more, so we had to have a steel mount."
On the day of this interview, Zawacki was building mounts for a coming quilt exhibit.
In the "We Walk in Two Worlds" exhibit, he points out a peace pipe that sits in two pieces in its Plexiglass case. Cultural tradition dictates the way it is displayed.
"Unless it's being smoked, the peace pipe never has the pipe stone on the end of the stem. It's detached," Zawacki says. "We set it up to make it look like one piece, but it's not actually together."
Building reproductions of furniture and other objects is another item in his job description.
"They're used in interpretive programs," he says. "When kids are going to sit in something, we don't let them sit in old furniture. It's always a reproduction."
Outside, a pair of small, weathered, wooden wheelbarrows made by Zawacki more than 20 years ago lean against a building. They have tires made of steel wrapped around a wooden-spoked rim.
"You have to heat up the steel tire to make it expand so you can get it over the wood, and then you cool it very quickly before it chars the yoke and then it shrinks."
In the kitchen and slave quarters behind the Brownlee House, furniture built by Zawacki including a sideboard, a table and a bench, help tell the story of what it was like to live in 1800s Arkansas.
Re-enactor Ameria Jones of Little Rock portrays Tabby, a slave owned by Robert Brownlee, and uses the furniture reproductions during her performances.
"There are days when we will do some cooking in here," she says. "This woodwork is incredible and the craftsmanship is excellent."
Next door to the Brownlee place is a re-creation of publisher William Woodruff's Arkansas Gazette offices and print shop. A replica of the Ramage printing press used by Woodruff is upstairs.
"We started this project in 1987 and the press was assembled and completed in 1990," Zawacki says. There are only eight originals still in existence, and he traveled to see ones in Michigan and Indiana.
The re-creation is made of red oak, Honduras mahogany and cherry.
"The entire process took three years because the cherry had to dry. We bought it from a mill up in Jasper and it was green when we got it. We dried it in the carriage house."
Comparing the way furniture was built 100, 200 years ago to today, Zawacki says, "It's variable. Depending on where you are, like if you go to Boston or New York, nobody is building stuff like that anymore. There may be some guys out there, but they're not doing it to make a living. They're doing it more as an exercise in art."
Worthen calls Zawacki a "top level conservator and we were lucky enough to get him and hold on to him. He's got a great sense of humor and is in some ways a little obsessive compulsive, but craftsmen like that often are."
"He's a glass half-full type of person," Bennett says.
In his shop at the museum is a wooden tool chest painted dark blue. Zawacki made it and took it with him on his apprenticeship to Poland. It still has a mailing label with his Madison address and the address it was shipped to in Warsaw. It's on wheels and the handles on its sides are made of rope. Inside are drawers filled neatly with his wood working tools.
"Power tools will only take you so far," Zawacki says. "They're not that precise. They get you close and they save an awful lot of time, but when it comes to actually fitting things you have to work with hand tools."
Beyond his work at the museum, he has traveled to China and Amsterdam for workshops and projects.
From October 1996 to May 1997, he took a leave of absence from the museum to travel with the conservation staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to Morocco, where they worked to conserve the intricately carved, circa 1137 minbar from the Kutubiyya Mosque. A minbar is like a pulpit in Islamic faith, and the one from the Kutubiyya Mosque is considered one of the most accomplished works of Islamic craftsmen.
"It was a once in a lifetime opportunity," Zawacki says.
Bennett says Zawacki's participation also reflected well on the Arkansas museum.
"He was asked to go and that was big for us. He got to go with an international team and live there. In our business that was a big deal."
STAYING IN LITTLE ROCK
Zawacki, who is single, says he plans to stay in Little Rock, and there will still be plenty of woodworking in retirement.
He's building a new boat, a 24-foot Tolman Alaskan skiff. It's the 16th boat he has built, including the 16-foot open runabout he piloted solo in 1994 from Little Rock to Thessalon, Ontario, Canada.
He dances yearly at the museum's Christmas events, swims regularly, does metal work, likes to fish and wants to travel more.
"Slovenia looks interesting, and so does New Zealand and Iceland," he says.
Style on 06/23/2019