Judy Bell said she took on the project after receiving a call from an 82-year-old gentleman in Olathe, Colorado, who could not find anyone in his area willing to touch them. He had acquired 12 paintings of Catholic saints from his father’s church in Strasburg, in southcentral North Dakota, after the congregation no longer planned to display them.

“He visited the old stomping grounds and discovered these in a heap as they were remodeling,” Bell said.

The paintings needed cleaning and restoring, but while in Colorado, they were stored under a bed, and the house had started on fire. That resulted in some soot and water damage that needed to be addressed as well.

Originally, Bell said, she was told there were four paintings needing restoration.

“I got them in the mail, and he’d rolled them up real tight and put them in a tube, and just the trip alone, all the paint fell off. I told him, don’t send any more – in the mail anyway. So, he drove up with the rest of them but he didn’t tell me at the beginning that he had eight more,” Bell said.

Bell returned the first restored painting to the owner. She now has nine more finished, with two remaining. The 11 paintings are to be part of an art show, “The Art of Restoration,” scheduled at the Taube Museum of Art from Aug. 1-Sept. 4. An artist reception is scheduled for Aug. 28 from 5-7 p.m.

The two unfinished paintings will be shown as they are, giving perspective to the scope of the restoration.

The paintings were created by Berthold von Imhoff, an artist known for his religious murals and paintings. Born in Germany in 1868, he immigrated to Pennsylvania, where he established a successful art business.

In 1914, he established his studio in St. Walburg, Saskatchewan, from where he created artwork that was delivered by wagon or train throughout the region before his death in 1939. His workshop and gallery now serve as a museum, which Bell has visited. More than 250 of Imhoff’s paintings remain in the museum, and more than 90 churches and cathedrals in Canada and the United States display his work. Pope XI honored Imhoff with the Knighthood of the Order of St. Gregory the Great in 1937.

“He didn’t charge for his religious paintings,” Bell said, explaining he earned his living on his nonreligious commissioned work.

Bell, a long-time artist herself, previously had done small painting restoration projects. Shortly before taking on the Colorado project, Bell and Tim Greenheck, with the former Gallery 18, took on a project for the Catholic Church in Karlsruhe in which Bell restored two 9-foot high Imhoff paintings and Greenheck remade frames. For the most part, the paintings were just dirty from laying on top of a coal furnace.

“They cleaned up beautifully,” Bell said.

The paintings originally from Strasburg are in a much more deteriorated condition, including one yet to be restored that sustained searing around the edges from the fire.

Bell said she has been putting a new canvas backing on the paintings to stabilize them. White putty fills in gaps in the paint and a primer helps hold the material together before repainting starts. Bell has pictures of the originals to guide her in places where paint has faded away.

“I started out in oils, which they were originally, but they were so damaged, I thought I’ll never be able to finish these and have them dry. So, I switched to acrylics, and that’s been working better for me. I don’t think it’ll hurt the quality of the painting,” she said.

Bell has been working on the project off and on over the past 10 years. More recently, she and a friend traveled to several churches to see Imhoff’s work. Last month, they visited the Strasburg church where the paintings in restoration once hung.

“They were always wondering what happened to them,” Bell said. “I said, ‘Well, they’re in my basement.'”

The owner who commissioned the restoration no longer is living. Bell isn’t sure what will ultimately happen to the paintings as she hasn’t been able to connect yet with the man’s family and his church. The owner had planned to incorporate the paintings into the decor of his church in Olathe.

Bell hopes to see the paintings eventually returned to a place of appreciation. Although she is not Catholic, she feels connected to the paintings as a result of her dedication to the work of restoring them.

“I talk to them all the time when I’m working on them,” she said. “I will miss them.”