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Hi Julia,
My experience is that full removal of the cloth is complicated. Polytab is a permanent application done with an acrylic gel. If you choose to de-commission a mural, the wall can be re-primed and any areas of the cloth that are failing can be removed. Other areas, if properly installed, should be permanent. Installing polytab should not leave cloth that can be torn off. Of course, things happen on site and each wall is different, but generally if you have cloth hanging off, you need the artist to go back and do some restoration work. When installing, the installer should cut out any sections not adhering to the wall. The muralist should then just paint those areas directly on the wall to match the design.
I generally tell people to think of the cloth as a layer of paint. If you need to replace the mural at some point, you just need to prep the wall with primer and remove loose areas of paint or cloth, like you would for prepping any wall surface for a mural.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to remove the cloth. You can likely power wash or sandblast it off, if you really need to (just like you can a layer of paint). But, those procedures do have some impact on the wall surface beneath. If you are going on an historic structure and you really need to be able to remove the mural from the historic brick, you might be best off installing wall panels that you can then remove. There are a number of materials to possibly use for wall panels that can be screwed into the surface to cover the entire wall. These can be painted beforehand and touched up after installation. This is one possible approach. Just trying to save you some headache down the road.
Feel free to call me if you want to discuss. There are lots of factors here that can also be wall specific for installing and removing polytab. I’m happy to offer my advice to you over the phone if you want to provide more details on the specific wall.
All the best,
Donald
Donald Gensler
Art in Public Places, Project Manager
Sacramento Office of Arts + Culture
915 I Street, 3rd Floor
Sacramento, Ca 95814
(o) 916-808-8493
(m) 916-955-4564
From: public_art_network@americansforthearts.simplelists.com <public_art_network@americansforthearts.simplelists.com> On Behalf Of Julia Muney Moore
Sent: Thursday, March 4, 2021 6:09 AM
To: public_art_network@americansforthearts.simplelists.com
Subject: Polytab murals--question
Hello PAN pals--I have a question for those of you who use Polytab for murals. We've done Polytab once, for part of a mural, but not large-scale.
We're about to do our first multi-story Polytab mural, and it's on a historic building. Our historic preservation folks are concerned that the public will try to peel it off the wall and that will damage the underlying structure. Has this been anyone's experience, that the public tries to pick or peel at it? Our previous one has had some of that, but it's in a hidden location away from public view and it experiences vandalism anyway. We used Polytab because we were also trying to consolidate the wall it's on. We're not sure whether the peeling resulted from public action, or just the wall falling apart and people seeing an opportunity.
Thanks--feel free to answer on-list or via private message. Interested in any experiences--especially where you had building owners or historic preservation folks concerned and you have had no issues.
Best,
Julia Muney Moore (she/her/hers)
Director of Public Art
924 N. Pennsylvania St.
Indianapolis, IN 46204
Direct line: (317) 624-2556
Switchboard: (317) 631-3301 x240
Public Art for Neighborhoods grants: http://indyarts.org/pafn
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