Historic mural restored to vibrancy in Cedar Rapids’ Cherry Building

CEDAR RAPIDS — In 1652, someone cut a doorway into Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper.” So it shouldn’t be a surprise — but it’s still surprising — to get up close to the newly restored Edwin Bruns mural in the Cherry Building and see the damage that had been done to the 1959 work.

Titled “Bohemian Experience in Iowa,” pieces of canvas were cut out in the past to accommodate a light switch and several shelves, and a crease remains visible where one section was wrapped around a corner.

Such treatment is not that uncommon. “You’d be surprised,” said Sean Ulmer, executive director at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art.

David and Lijun Chadima of Cedar Rapids, who own the Cherry Building in the southeast New Bohemia District, agreed to provide a home for the massive two-piece work, which placed side by side, measures 5 feet 2 inches high by 31 feet 6 inches long.

It hangs on the second floor, and will be in the spotlight during the First Thursday Art Walk from 5 to 7 p.m. Sept. 5. Artist Kathryn Levin of Cedar Rapids, who restored the work, will be on hand to answer questions.

Mural’s history

Edwin Bruns (1899-1970) was born in Manistee, Mich., and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. According to his biography at artprice.com, he served as the Cedar Rapids School District’s art director from 1929 to 1946. His work was exhibited around the Midwest, and the art classes he taught at the YWCA in the 1960s were so popular they drew waiting lists.

“Ed Bruns was a beloved artist in the Cedar Rapids community,” Ulmer said. “We have 13 works by Bruns in the collection, which include landscapes, portraits, and images of Europe.”

One of his best-known works is “The Seven Ages of a City,” commissioned by Sutherland Dows, then president of Iowa Electric Light and Power Co. The paintings were published in a booklet by Dows in 1957. It’s “a series (Bruns) spent thousands of hours researching and then painting, to show the development and entrepreneurial spirit of Cedar Rapids,” Ulmer noted. The paintings are stored at The History Center in downtown Cedar Rapids.

In 1959, the Western Bohemian Fraternal Association commissioned Bruns to create “Bohemian Experience in Iowa.” He spent eight months researching and painting the mural, which depicts famous landmarks from Prague to Cedar Rapids, including the former headquarters of Zapadni Cesko-Bratrska Jednota (ZCBJ), built in 1908, now home to the Olympic South Side Theater in the NewBo District.

This fraternal association, which offered insurance and financial services, as well as a social hub for the Czech community, eventually became known as Western Fraternal Life Association (WFLA). The mural was installed in the WFLA building at 1900 First Ave. NE until a 2020 merger folded WFLA into BetterLife Insurance, and the headquarters moved to Madison, Wis.

In early 2021, the Bruns mural was removed from the WFLA walls and donated to the nonprofit Save CR Heritage, which then offered it to the Chadimas for the Cherry Building, a former dairy equipment manufacturing plant now filled with art studios, galleries and other creative endeavors.

“The biggest thing we wanted, was to find a find a home for it, where it would be available for the public to see it, and not hidden in the basement somewhere,” said Jay Vavra, treasurer of Save CR Heritage. “(This building) is the perfect place, and we’re so thankful. ... We knew that the Chadimas were big supporters of the arts and Cedar Rapids history. What they've done with the Cherry Building itself shows a commitment to preserving history in Cedar Rapids.”

  Buy Photo

Mural restoration

Painted with oil on canvas, the first mural section shows Czech composer Antonin Dvorak in Spillville, surrounded by the musical influences of Native Americans and African Americans, reflected in his “New World Symphony.” The other section features Lady Columbia encouraging cooperation between a Czech immigrant and an American surveyor, pictured with their families. On either side are small portraits of Tomas Masaryk, Czechoslovakia’s first president, and Abraham Lincoln.

“I love this whole mural, but my favorite section is Lady Columbia forcing the Czech immigrant family and the American surveyor to shake hands, like ‘All right guys, figure this out,’ ” David Chadima said.

One artist began sourcing the hand-woven fabric needed to fill in the blanks. But when the initial restoration work became too time-consuming for her schedule, she bowed out, David Chadima said.

“We were very fortunate to have Kathryn (Levin) to pick it up and do such a fabulous job getting it finished,” he added, citing others involved in the process, as well. John Schwartzkopf, who makes fine-art wood works in his Cherry Building studio, made the mural’s frame. Vavra, a civil engineer, stored the rolled-up canvas in the Shoemaker & Haaland engineering office across the hall, until the mural could be installed.

  Buy Photo

Levin, 59, of Cedar Rapids, said she enjoyed painting in her younger days, and continued painting “off and on over the years.”

She studied art in college, but switched majors to sociology and education, spending most of her career in counseling positions and education. She retired from the Anamosa State Penitentiary a year and a half ago, which gave her time to pick up her paint brushes again. She joined the Cherry Building creatives about a year ago, when she opened her art studio and gallery, Paint Soup, around the corner from the mural.

“When I was very young, I was fortunate to be able to assist a little bit on a restoration project, which was why, when (the Chadimas) asked me if I could just fill in the missing patches, I said, ‘No, but how about if I clean it and do the steps necessary to preserve it and correct some of the small dings that were all over the piece, and fill in the missing patches, and then put a thin layer of the varnish over the whole thing.’ ”

  Buy Photo

Beginning at the end of May/early June, she spent more than two months working on the project. The first step was the painstaking process of carefully wiping cleaning solution one small section at a time, “which took days,” she said. Standing on step stool, the most she could work at a time was about four hours.

Not only did the oil painting have some water damage, it also had “60 years of grime and smoke” to wipe away, David Chadima noted. He, Lijun and Vavra all expressed their surprise at how vibrant the colors became as Levin worked.

Lijun Chadima passed the painting every day. “And then one day, I walked by, and said, ‘Oh my goodness. All the details started to pop up.’ I can learn more history about what Edwin Bruns wanted to showcase for the immigration stories, and tie in with all the Czech and Slovak immigrants, so it’s a great experience.”

But cleaning was just the beginning.

Levin then let the mural rest before for a couple of days before filling in some of the deeper divots with spackling, then painting the missing or damaged areas.

“I tried to paint those in as true to the original intent as I could figure, given the resources that I had,” she said, “trying to figure out, ‘What should that be? What should that look like?’ You wouldn’t think that would be a mystery, but as it turns out, there weren’t really a lot of photos taken of those portions. I did have photos of other portions, but that didn’t really help.

“But between everything, I’m pretty pleased with the outcome,” she said. “I was not able to get all of the water damage cleaned off, and with some of that, I felt that if I started trying to retouch it with paint, it was going to turn into ‘my’ painting more than ‘his’ painting. And so I have left some of that just because I felt like that was going to do more damage than good. It also tells a little history of the painting itself — part of its story.”

The Chadimas financed the work, and although David Chadima declined to say how much that cost, he said, “I think Kathryn gave us a reasonable price for the amount of work that she put into it, and we’re just thrilled with the outcome. ... It wasn’t cheap, but we think it was totally worth it.”

Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com