Lecture
Text, Video
2026
Mariel Capanna, Fresco Lecture
For many years, our fresco instructors at Skowhegan have developed a consistent—yet flexible—methodology for introducing participants to this ancient technique. While our approach to learning is generally open and nontraditional, fresco requires a particular kind of care and knowledge, and we have built a structure around preserving and sharing it.
What begins as a lecture by one of our instructors develops into a series of workshops exploring the history, technique, and possibilities of fresco. Those who want to continue working with the medium can then make their own fresco in our fresco barn. Mariel Capanna is an artist who has been working with us for several years. In this video, she goes deep into the history of fresco and how its practice has shaped Skowhegan over the past eighty years.
Abstract
Artist Mariel Capanna gives a lecture discussing the history and process of fresco. Capanna teaches the participants how to build a relationship to fresco, the rich history that fresco has had with Skowhegan over the decades, and how frescoes are one of the few mediums that are materially able to hold and tell time. Capanna shows images of frescos across centuries and around the world, encouraging participants to walk around the barn and look at the frescos on the walls. Capanna goes into highly precise detail talking about how frescos are made, and the relationships between pigments, water, aggregate (riverbed sand), and slick lime putty. Capanna explains how the paint consists of pigment, plus a binder—water that becomes the lime putty inside the plaster, then forming the wall or substrate in a fresco painting. The lime is the support and the binder of a fresco painting, and is made of limestone, a sedimentary rock made of calcium carbonate. Limestone is an abundant material, accounting for 20 percent of sedimentary rock on the planet that has been formed through the accumulation and compression of organic matter such as skeletons, sea urchins, and corals. Capanna describes how the limestone is crushed into very small rocks and heated at 1100° Celsius in a lime kiln. Water is then added to the lime in a process called slaking, which is an exothermic chemical process that generates an enormous amount of heat. Through this exothermic process, calcium oxide is converted into calcium hydroxide: lime putty. The development of strong lime putty requires time to achieve maturation. Once aged lime putty is created, it is added to a mixing bag, softened by using a hoe, and then sand is added to form a sturdy and malleable lime plaster. With the plaster formed, it can be applied to a substrate (rigid yet porous surfaces like brick, wood, steel). After the surface is created, several successive layers of plaster are added, with each layer serving as a stage and sponge for a subsequent layer. Each layer is then re-wetted before the next layer of plaster is added. Following the final layer of plaster, pigments can be painted onto the surface with brittle brushes.
People
Mariel Capanna