Crystal Artist Restores Theater Scenery to Its Former Glory
A Crystal painter is in a race against the clock to save aging theater scenery.
“There aren’t a lot of people that do what I do,” said Wendy Waszut-Barrett.
Since the early 1990s, Waszut-Barrett has been on a mission to repair, restore and preserve historic theater scenery collections.
Over time, Waszut-Barrett has developed her own restoration techniques.
“It’s mainly cleaning and repairing, and it’s crawling on your hands and knees because most stuff is too big to put up on a table,” said Waszut-Barrett. “So it’s hard work.”
CCX News caught up with her at the Czech and Slovak Hall in St. Paul, where she was restoring a large painted theater scene.
Wendy Waszut-Barrett, a Crystal artist, is restoring the theater scene at the Czech and Slovak Hall in St. Paul.
These now fragile sceneries were once a familiar sight across the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
“What you would get in the small town of Cuba, Kansas that has like 150 people was the same visual aesthetic that you would get at the Hippodrome in New York,” said Waszut-Barrett.
These artist undertakings helped connect people.
Today, they remind us of our collective heritage.
“It’s being able to step back in time standing in front of a piece that generations stood in front of,” said Waszut-Barrett.
While she’s made repairs at opera houses, cinemas, and other locations across the United States, she doesn’t forget where her love of the arts began — at Robbinsdale Cooper High School.
“Without that high school experience of the arts in District 281, there’s no way that I would have continued at college,” she said.
As a guest artist at Hamline University and an author of an in-depth scenic art blog, Waszut-Barrett hopes to pass on her knowledge to the next generation of artists.
“It’s not just preserving artifacts — it’s preserving a trade that is partially lost at this point,” says Waszut-Barrett.
She makes sure that these timeless masterpieces make their curtain call far into the future.
“They have another century in them if they’re handled well,” says Waszut-Barrett.
Waszut-Barrett hopes to wrap up her restoration work at the Czech and Slovak Hall in St. Paul around Christmas.
Cooper High School
