Artist Putting Final Touches on Refurbished Avalon Theatre

Eva Matysekis playing a painstaking role in the $750,000 restoration of the Avalon Theatre on Catalina Island.

The Torrance-based artist, who restored a Rembrandt in her native Poland, has been working 12 to 14 hours a day since early April, returning color and detail to the huge mural in the movie theater in the Casino Building.

The paintings, which depict life on the island since before human habitation, were done by John Gabriel Beckman, who also painted murals at Graumann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.

“I construct whatever is missing and restore whatever is there,” Matysek said. “It’s not my own creation; I’m just trying to preserve the original.”

The Art Deco theater is undergoing its first complete restoration since the Casino Building was built in 1929.

The overhaul has been in the planning stages for two years, said Billy Delbert, director of the Casino Building for the Santa Catalina Island Co. A team of about 20 workers is expected to finish the work in August.

But Matysek has the most exacting role.

She has dusted away paint that had turned to powder on the 15-by-250-foot mural, and is painting with brushes as small as one-twelfth of an inch. Larger-than-life Native Americans and horses once again spring from the theater wall.

“I just love it. I feel very pleased to be able to help save these pieces of art,” she said.

The theater’s renovation also includes removing the 1,184 folding seats from their wrought-iron bases, so the plush covers can be reupholstered and the wooden seat backs and armrests refinished.

The worn carpet has been replaced with one of royal reds and blues to match the design of the wooden aisle ends.

In the foyer, the fresco ceiling and lighting fixtures have been cleaned, and workers are refinishing the dozens of 12-foot-high black-walnut wall panels.

“Everything will be as close to original as we can get,” Delbert said.

The theater is on the ground floor of the Casino Building, constructed for $2 million at Big Sugar Point, on the shores of the island’s capital.

The building was conceived by Chicago entrepreneur William Wrigley Jr., who established the Santa Catalina Island Co. 100 years ago.

Designed by Walter Webber and Sumner A. Spaulding, it was erected not as a gambling palace, but in the traditional spirit of the Italian word casino , meaning a place of entertainment. It also has a ballroom directly above the theater.

“They felt early on that people wouldn’t come to Avalon just for the sake of coming to Avalon, that there had to be things for them to do,” explained Wayne Griffin, executive director of the Catalina Island Chamber of Commerce & Visitors Bureau.

The theater, with its high-domed, silver-leaf ceiling dotted with twinkling stars, creates a feeling of being outdoors. “That’s why we call it an atmospheric theater,” Delbert said.

Silent films were accompanied by music from the Page pipe organ that still sits in front of the stage.

During World War II, merchant seamen were entertained by performers, bands and boxers on the theater stage.

Today, one recent movie release is presented there every week. But silent films are still occasionally reeled through Brenkert carbon arc projectors.

In fact, a showing of Rupert Julian’s silent film version of “Phantom of the Opera” earlier this month was sold out.