NORTHAMPTON — In 2002, employees working at the former Hampshire Probate and Family Court at 33 King St. were in a predicament: How do you bring life into a former parking garage being used as a courthouse?
The answer? Add some romance.
A couple years later, in 2004, a 10-foot-by-18-foot painting with a sweeping view of the Oxbow and a mildly romantic view of Northampton in the distance was installed into the stairwell of the former courthouse that also served as the Registry of Deeds. Fast forward to 2019, it was speculated the piece, conceived by artist Vitek Kruta, may be lost forever after the building closed that year.
But now six years later, and 21 years after the painting was installed, the painting has a new home.
On Wednesday, 50 people came out to see the relocated piece at the new Hampshire Probate and Family Court on Atwood Drive. The artwork now adorns a wall in a community room of the office, in a place where people fill out paperwork with their lawyers.
Initially, it was thought to be impossible to move the piece out of the old building.
“When we left (in 2019), we thought we had to say goodbye to the mural that had given so many so much pleasure,” said Mark Ames, the Hampshire County register of Probate and Family Court.
The painting’s creator, Kruta, spent 10 years in Germany restoring castles and churches, and removing frescoes. He said it would be a “piece of cake” to move the piece, which weighs about 500 pounds and was painted onto 3/4-inch thick sheetrock, out of the old building that’s slated for demolition.
But even for an expert like Kruta, the task wasn’t as easy as that. For one, it was moved in the middle of February.
“There was no heat. It was dark because there was no electricity. We had battery powered lights and a little scaffolding,” Kruta said.
The piece was taken out as 16 individual panels that barely fit through the doorways at the new courthouse.
“It (the painting) was also quite faded and dirty so we had to clean it,” Kruta said. “And while I was doing it, I added a few details because I felt why not? I’m the artist.”
Decorate to dignify
When Kruta painted the piece in 2004, it was inspired by his philosophy: “The word decorate means dignify.”
“We decorate soldiers, we decorate homes. We decorate everything that is really dear to us and important to us,” he said.
So he approached the work back then with the mentality that his final produce would hopefully allow people “to calm down and find a dignity in the human drama that they are dealing with.”
The challenge at the former Hampshire Probate and Family Court building was unique. The structure served as a parking garage in the 1950s before being converted into office space in 1976. The space eventually housed the Hampshire Family Court, the Hampshire Probate Court, the Hampshire Registry of Deeds and probation offices.
An art committee was formed, made up of court staff, attorneys, and local artists to try and fix the “institutional” and “Soviet” feel of the building, said Ames.
At this weeks reopening ceremony, Ames read off the grant proposal made in 2003 by that art committee that was trying to spearhead a movement to getting some color in the building.
“The Hampshire Probate and Family Court is housed in a former parking garage on King Street in Northampton,” read Ames. “The court is located on the second floor of the building. Families enter the court through an institutional stairwell. Families who have hearings before a judge wait in a long, barren, nearly windowless hallway for their cases to be heard. They often wait for long periods.”
The committee selected Kruta to rectify the problem. Completing the masterpiece with his then 16-year-old daughter, Veronica, took “my whole life and a couple days,” he said, a comment that drew laughter from those in attendance.
There is only one person painted into the scenery and that person has a name — Thomas Cole.
Kruta made the painting as a tribute to Cole, who founded the Hudson River School Art movement and specialized in romantic landscapes. The 19th-century British painter had done his own painting of the Oxbow, a view from Mount Holyoke and Northampton, during a thunderstorm that became a seminal work in romantic art.
In addition to the miniature man painting at his easel in the right panel of the painting, there is a book smack dab in the center and at the bottom of the piece. In the book are the names of local communities as they were named by the Indigenous people of the region.
Other than the painting, photography by Shelley Rotner of mothers, fathers and grandparents were hung to brighten up the gray environment.
“The works of art do more than just ornament their spaces, but they enliven them,” Ames said. “They remind everyone who comes to our offices that they are surrounded by color and beauty, even if the circumstances that bring them to us are difficult.”
Among people there who long enjoyed the piece was attorney Alan Sharp. He came out to celebrate the piece that we said was “always very calming.”