Removing art from Rothko Chapel is a moving experience Photo of Molly Glentzer Molly Glentzer March 7, 2019 Updated: March 11, 2019 12:38 p.m. Comments 2 1of2Laramie Justice, on floor, and Scott Peveto, right, along with other Crate Works employees crate one of the paintings in the Rothko Chapel Wednesday, March 6, 2019, in Houston. All of the Mark Rothko canvases will be moved ahead of a major renovation.Photo: Melissa Phillip, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer 2of2Employees with CrateWorks move a Mark Rothko canvas into a crate on Wednesday, March 6, 2019, in Houston. All of the monumental paintings will be moved ahead of a major renovation.Photo: Melissa Phillip, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

The 14 monumental canvases of Houston’s Rothko Chapel look like they bear the weight of the world, rendered in dark washes of purple and black that suggest the bottomless depths of the human soul.

But they aren’t actually very heavy.

Justin Griswold, the owner of the art handling company CrateWorks, knows this because he is handling the legendary paintings for the second time in his career, crating and removing them ahead of this year’s chapel renovation.

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Griswold and his crew of six went to work quickly after the chapel closed its doors to the public this week for the duration of a project that’s expected to last through mid-December. The building is getting a new skylight and ceiling as well as a more welcoming entry during phase 1 of a $30 million campus reinvention that includes two new buildings and an energy facility across Sul Ross Street from the chapel.

By Wednesday, four paintings were boxed and leaning against the east wall like giant mattresses awaiting delivery. Each was screwed into a custom made, three-sided white pine crate, so it appeared to float. Each crate was wrapped neatly in plastic, secured with cardboard corners and long, straight lines of tape Donald Judd would have appreciated.

Seeing the light

Daylight bounced more than usual from the exposed gray walls, illuminating glorious washes of paint on a southwest corner canvas that has often looked impenetrable. Suddenly, it could be read as a dense landscape of peaks and valleys swathed in fog, suggesting how different the chapel experience could be after the new skylight is installed.

Griswold felt like he was seeing some light, too. The job was going well, after three weeks of 10 or 12-hour days of prep work. He built the crates to exacting dimensions, so they could be deconstructed and reassembled inside the chapel; and also accommodate existing screw holes in the canvas’ wooden stretchers. The screws stabilize the paintings, so they don’t shift or twist in the crates.

The canvases range from 12-by-15 feet to 12-by-6 feet and don’t fit through the octagonal building’s small interior doors. They were originally lowered into the center space through the ceiling. Now, getting them out requires demolishing an interior plaster wall that Griswold knows well.

He has handled art on the Menil campus since the beginning — he remembers bringing objects from Rice University to the loading dock of Renzo Piano’s museum building before it opened. His company helped de-install the Byzantine chapel’s frescoes some years back and more recently crated and shipped Barnett Newman’s “Broken Obelisk,” the sculpture in the chapel’s reflection pool, for a restoration.

Special memories

The Rothko Chapel paintings are special to him — although not because his family held a memorial service there once for his father in law, or because he visits occasionally to watch light changing on the canvases. He can’t stop thinking about a man whose hands were on the canvases alongside his own 20 years ago.

In 1999, the last time designers tweaked the chapel’s perpetually vexing ceiling and skylight, the paintings went to the Menil Collection’s conservation lab. Griswold had just started CrateWorks but was still working for his mentor, Gary “Bear” Parham, the Menil’s art services director. Related

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Parham died suddenly, of a heart attack, in 2005. Working in the chapel now, Griswold senses his presence. “I almost feel like he’s been making sure everything goes well,” he said.

For David Leslie, the Rothko Chapel’s executive director, that kind of connection is part of the beauty of the place.

“You just don’t know what people are bringing in,” he said. “When we’re open, you might have someone who just got married sitting next to someone who just lost a family member. Here in this one space, you’ve got the range of emotion. You don’t know any of the stories, but they’re all happening at the same time, which is the best of community.”