High up on a scaffolding and ladder, Phyllis Beard stoops over, a tiny brush in her hand as she labors over the huge mural hanging in Courtroom 1. For the last few weeks, she's been carefully restoring Vincente Aderente's mural "Criminal Law" which hangs behind Mercer County President Judge Francis J. Fornelli's bench.

"I think they're just beautiful paintings," Ms. Beard said. "And I really wanted to work on another courthouse."

The Boardman, Ohio, artist has worked for nearly 10 years restoring artwork in the area. She restored artwork in the local courthouse's sister building, the Mahoning County Courthouse, which Ms. Beard said was designed by the same architect.

She's also restored work in other Youngstown buildings, including Sts. Peter and Paul and St. Nicholas Byzantine churches, and she worked on the Fellows Riverside Garden paintings for the new D.D. and Velma Davis Education and Visitor Center at Mill Creek Park in Youngstown.

Before beginning the Mercer County Courthouse restoration, Ms. Beard studied the artwork to determine its condition.

"I'm lucky with these paintings because when I was able to look at them and start work, everything else was done," she said. "They were so faded and dark, almost sepia colored. When these were first painted, they were beautiful, vibrant colors. When I started, you couldn't even see outlines and figures. You had this beautiful courtroom and saw a dead, dark painting."

To start the careful process of restoring the artwork, which is done in oil paints on heavy "circus cloth," to their original beauty, Ms. Beard first cleaned the paintings to remove old varnish.

"You have to be careful to do it right, or you could end up taking some of the pigment and color off," she said.

After removing the browning varnish, Ms. Beard said she started to see the outlines of figures in the murals.

"They started to emerge like ghost figures," she said.

After the painting dries from the cleaning process, she said she starts replacing the original colors that may have been damaged or faded away. Then, a protective varnish will be added to preserve the art.

The artists of Mercer County's murals are quite well known, Ms. Beard said.

The mural hanging in Judge Michael A. Wherry's courtroom is A. E. Foringer's "Civil Law;" its companion piece, Aderente's "Criminal Law," hangs in Fornelli's courtroom. Both were commissioned in the early 1900s, Ms. Beard said.

Aderente completed murals for statehouses, government buildings, banks and courts throughout the early and mid-1900s, most notably the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. He worked under leading American artist Edwin Blashfield, who painted many well known murals in churches and government buildings, including the artwork at the Mahoning County Courthouse.

Foringer is most well known for his poster, "The Greatest Mother of All," which is used by the American Red Cross.

If the Mercer County commissioners can get funding from the state, Ms. Beard said, her next project in the courthouse will be to restore the rotunda.

"It really is the centerpiece of the entire courthouse," she said.

Commissioner Olivia M. Lazor said the county is working on getting a grant to help cover the high cost of restoring the rotunda.

An estimated $175,000 is needed to restore the artwork in the rotunda and to replace the historic stenciling. Much of the multicolored stenciling throughout the courthouse has to be replaced, Mrs. Lazor said, because the plaster around it was in such disrepair the plaster was either taken down or redone.

"We have photographs of what it looked like," Mrs. Lazor said, "and we also have a section still intact for an artist to go by."

Another high bill for the painting restoration will come from the rental of scaffolding to reach up three stories to the rotunda roof. That would cost another $25,000, Mrs. Lazor said.

The restoration of courtroom murals did not come from the $34 million bond issue that paid for, among other projects, the courthouse renovations.

Money for the restoration of the two murals came from the courts fund, that is, money that is separate from the general county coffers.

When it became evident the costs of restoring the art would be cost-prohibitive for the county, the courts stepped in to foot the bill.

"We have a discretionary courts fund," Fornelli said, "and those murals are a treasure that have been allowed to deteriorate."

It would be impossible to replace them, Fornelli said. "They are an asset that is close to invaluable."

You can e-mail Herald Staff Writer Amanda Smith-Teutsch at: ateutsch@sharonherald.com