Spot Light The Makeover Artist

STASHKA Starr has spent most of (he past year laboring inch-by-inch to restore the Spirit of Centennial, one of a chorus line of monumental, semi-mythic figures who stare out over the Esplanade in front of Fair Park’s Hall of State. The 70-foot-lall Spirit was designed by Raoul Jossett and hefted onto her pedestal in 1936.

Over the ensuing decades, the plasterover-wood-frame statue became so ravaged by rain and pigeon droppings that by the time it was decided to do her makeover, “she was hardly a woman at all,” says Stashka.

Every day for months, the restorer has climbed the wooden scaffolding in her green plastic shoes and rubber gloves, with two pairs of glasses dangling from her neck and a paintbrush in one hand, to painstakingly reclaim Spirit from the elements.

Trained in restoration in her native Poland, Stashka and her husband. Richard, came to Dallas via Canyon, where she was in charge of painting conservation at the Panhandle Museum.

Looking at her fully restored Spirit, a true Big Everything Texas Venus, Stashka says with a coy sense of satisfaction, “She is one sexy cookie now.”