Gainesville Sun Story
http://www.gainesville.com/article/2..._cave_restored
Vandalized cave restored
Gene Page/Special to The Sun Diver Wayne Kinard, left, and artist/diver Michael Angelo Gagliardi swim down into Cow Springs to repair vandalism 700 feet inside the cave and 80 feet deep.
By Jessica Miller
Correspondent
Published: Saturday, February 7, 2009 at 6:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, February 6, 2009 at 11:12 p.m.
Some 80 feet underwater and 700 feet into the bowels of a spring in Lafayette County, they've combined art and science to restore a cave that vandals damaged last year.
Those who worked for months on the project say it's the first known successful underwater cave restoration, and it took place in late December at Cow Springs, a small, remote spring off State Road 51 near Luraville, north of the town of Mayo.
To achieve the restoration, they enlisted the help of Michael Angelo Gagliardi, professional artist and actor from Chicago, who led a team of divers to document the restoration of the spring's vandalized clay bank.
"I happily volunteered my time and money for this project," Gagliardi said. "But it wouldn't have been done properly without the help of my dive team."
Months before the first dive took place, Gagliardi was doing his research. Clay samples from the vandalized cave were matched with artist ceramic clays.
Gagliardi matched the colors of the clay to the colors of the cave and thinned it down into a paste he could then put into a caulking gun to fill in the damage.
After supplies were prepared, and the underwater work station was set, the project began.
The dive team consisted of Gagliardi, dive shop owner Wayne Kinard of Fort White, Gene Page, a motion picture and television still photographer from Micanopy, and Jill Heinerth, a pioneering technical diver from Karst Productions in High Springs. Cave diver Bill Bowden acted as surface support.
Page took more than 500 before-and-after photographs throughout the dive project.
The restoration took three days and 30 hours to complete - not including research and planning.
The team used the specialized clay paste to repair the damage to the clay bank, into which the initials "PY" and "DIC" had been carved.
After all the work filling the gouges, Gagliardi said he used two soft-haired brushes to smooth and blend the restoration.
Gagliardi said if the goal at Cow Springs had been to just fill in the letters dug into the cave bank, most any diver could have done the job. But as an artist who has worked with clay for more than 20 years, Gagliardi said he was able to make the cave look similar to how it did before it was damaged.
"As a scenic artist, I was able to match the texture and colors exactly," he said.
Heinerth called it a historic undertaking.
"You can imagine how distasteful it is to see graffiti on a bridge or a building," she said. "These caves are monuments of nature that have taken thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years to grow. Having it restored again is priceless. These caves are the conduits of the life blood of our planet."
The idea of using Gagliardi to help reconstruct the clay bank actually came in an exchange of e-mails between the artist and Forrest Wilson, a member of the National Speleogical Society-Cave Diving Section.
Apparently Wilson e-mailed the artist asking for his help at precisely the same time Gagliardi was e-mailing Wilson volunteering to help.
"Forrest e-mailed me asking if I could use my skills as an artist to come up with ideas," Gagliardi recalled. "At the same moment, our e-mails literally crossed on the Net, and I volunteered my skills as both a fine art and theatrical sculptor."
Gagliardi said the team effort and skill were outstanding throughout the underwater mission.
"Working with Wayne (Kinard), for example, is like working with a telepathic," Gagliardi said. "He knew every tool I needed as I thought about it. All I had to do was hand one tool back and the next tool popped into my hand."
Working artistically underwater is nothing new to Gagliardi. He's been a certified scuba diver since 1996, and soon after getting his certification he began drawing the underwater world.
Although he resides in Chicago, Gagliardi has a keen interest in North Florida.
He owns 10 acres of land near High Springs and he owns Chateau H20, lodging for cave divers located in Live Oak. Gagliardi said he plans to make a return visit to Cow Springs again this summer.
"I am glad to have been part of something so positive to the environment," he said.
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