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If you’ve wandered around Old Town Eureka at any point in the last two days, you may have noticed volunteers and staff with the Humboldt Arts Council carefully dismantling and removing the Romano Gabriel Wooden Sculpture Garden from its Second Street display. Fear not, dear reader, the relocation is only temporary.

In an interview with the Outpost earlier this week, Haley Davis, education and outreach coordinator for the arts council, said the world-famous Italian folk art exhibition is being moved to a temporary storage to accommodate repairs to the building it is housed in.

“There was some damage to the roof this winter, and water got into the building,” Davis said. “Unfortunately, the walls and the ceiling have a lot of water damage, but luckily, the artwork wasn’t damaged because it’s on platforms. This restoration project is really about repairing the building.”

The arts council secured grant funding from the Kohler Foundation to help fund the major restoration project. While construction is underway, staff with the Balboa Art Conservation Center will assess each hand-carved and hand-painted piece of the display, which range in size from itty-bitty apples to 20-foot trees. The conservation team will clean and stabilize the wooden sculptures and offer advice on how to best maintain the exhibition.

“We’re not planning on doing any repainting of the art; we’re really trying to just keep it in its current state as best we can,” Davis said. “The goal is to return them in better condition than they left.”

Photo: Humboldt Arts Council

For those unfamiliar, the sculpture garden is the work of Italian immigrant Romano Gabriel, who settled in Eureka after serving in World War I and made a name for himself as a carpenter and prolific folk artist. Before the collection was relocated to Old Town, the pieces filled Gabriel’s Pine Street yard, almost completely obscuring his home and gaining national and international attention. Photographs of the sculptures have been featured in magazines and books, according to an article from the Eureka Heritage Society, and some of the pieces have toured Europe and been displayed at the San Francisco Museum of Art.

“He had a reputation for being a hermit, so it’s interesting that he was so extroverted with his art [because] it was a spectacle,” Davis said. “It’s kind of mind-boggling how many pieces of art there are, and it’s quirky to see the names of the artworks … there’s just so much character. 

“I’ve also heard that the wood he used is all reclaimed wood,” she added. “Some people say he used pallets from the grocery store, but I’ve also heard it was specifically fruit crates.”

After Gabriel died in 1977, the Ray Vellutini family bought his Pine Street Home and helped restore it. A few years later, the Vellutinis partnered with the Eureka Heritage Society and the City of Eureka to build a permanent display for the sculpture garden in Old Town.

Local documentarian Jeffrey Reinus was among the small group of volunteers carefully removing the sculptures from the display on Wednesday afternoon. While waiting for the U-Haul to make its way back from the storage site, Reinus chatted with the Outpost about the Romano Gabriel KEET-TV documentary he’s been working on since 2023, the last time the sculpture garden was deep-cleaned. It’s still in the works, Reinus said, but federal cuts to public broadcasters have made it more difficult to track down funding. 

He’s still looking for early photos of Gabriel’s garden, before it was completely filled. If you’ve got something to share, you can email him at romanogabriel.doc@gmail.com.

The restoration will take a couple of months to complete, with the goal of having the pieces back in the display by winter.

Those interested in lending a hand can come to the volunteer workdays on Wednesday, Aug. 19 and Thursday, Aug. 20. The group meets in front of the sculpture garden at 315 Second Street in Old Town Eureka at 1 p.m. 

Keep scrolling for more photos and video!

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