By: Bill Greenwood
Ever since the late 1990s, Donovan Klotzbeacher has been a fan of Louise Tracy’s art, but not in the traditional sense.
Ms. Tracy, of Rue Road in Monroe, had been urged by her husband, Robert, to create a series of colored-pencil drawings of tropical fruit for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he worked as an inspector. Ms. Tracy took the job.
"It turned out to be a manual for the USDA of 65 tropical fruits, cross sections included, which were used, up until recently, throughout the country to help the inspectors identify the different fruits that came into the ports," she said.
As fate would have it, Mr. Klotzbeacher, of Stony Path Drive in Dayton, also was working as an inspector with the USDA at that time. He was impressed by Ms. Tracy’s drawings. So much, in fact, that he commissioned her to decorate the soundboard of a harpsichord he had been building for the First Presbyterian Church of Cranbury.
Now, the instrument is complete and ready for its first performance, an event that will take place Sunday at a 9:50 a.m. service at the Presbyterian Church on North Main Street. For both builder and painter, the day will mark the end of a long, arduous and ultimately rewarding journey.
"I’ve had this thing 10 years, working on it off and on," Mr. Klotzbeacher said. "This kit was purchased in 1981, so it’s now 26 years from the date that it was purchased. So, this is a milestone."
The harpsichord kit from which Mr. Klotzbeacher constructed the instrument was originally owned by Lee and David Nissen, of Cranbury, Mr. Klotzbeacher said. He had been looking for a new kit, having already completed one in 1972, and approached the two about it in 1997.
"She and her husband thought about it and decided to turn the kit over to me on the provision that it be used in the church," Mr. Klotzbeacher said. "Since I’m the organist and choir director at the church, that was OK by me."
Mr. Klotzbeacher worked sporadically on the harpsichord until March, when he retired from government work. At that point, he kicked the project into high gear, with some urging from Ms. Tracy.
"I ran out of excuses why I shouldn’t have this harpsichord finished, so I got right on it," he said. "Louise was pestering me, too. She wanted me to finish it."
Ms. Tracy, a member of the Suburban Artists Guild of Central New Jersey, had painted the soundboard for the instrument in 2002 and was eagerly awaiting a chance to see the finished product. Mr. Klotzbeacher had left the subject matter of the painting up to her, and she decided to decorate the harpsichord with paintings of wildflowers and domestic flowers that she had encountered while traveling throughout the United States.
To that end, she coated the soundboard with colorful paintings of pitcher flowers, found in the Pine Barrens; twin flowers, found in the Rocky Mountains; and domestic flowers like the bleeding heart. The paintings were done in a gouache medium.
"It’s an opaque watercolor, so when you lay it down, you can’t fuss with it too much," Ms. Tracy said. "I blended on the soundboard some colors, but if you put a wrong stroke, you can sponge it up to a certain extent, but you have to put something over it. You can’t leave it the way it is because it’s smudgy."
She said she chose flowers as a decoration because they, along with music, have always brought her happiness.
"Music, to me, has always been a joy, and so are flowers," Ms. Tracy said. "They give me a great deal of joy to observe them and plant them sometimes. Just to come upon a meadow or a woodland flower is just sheer delight."
Now that the main work and the decorations have been completed, Mr. Klotzbeacher is putting some finishing touches on the harpsichord to make sure it sounds as good as it possibly can during its premiere. It will be the last instrument he builds for quite some time, he said, but he won’t be resting for long.
"I’ll take a long hiatus," he said. "Then I was thinking about building a portative organ."
