An Artist of Today Reflects on the WPA of Yesterday

This economy has been debillitating this country and the world for at least 5 years.  If you are wealthy, you are not feeling the effects much if at all - while many others are worrying about food for their children.  Among many folks, their jobs disappear in an instant - others have to watch helplessly as they dissolve slowly. As an artist I know what I produce is at the bottom of the list for most Americans when they can barely afford groceries, gas and housing every month. Art is not a necessity, you won't starve without it - but one's soul might hunger for it silently. It's enough to make an artist yearn for a new WPA!

In the early days of the Great Depression (1929-1943) with unemployment at 32%  President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration or WPA to provide work and relief to citizens. Several months later in the Spring of 1935, he started the subdivision of the WPA, the Federal Art Project (FAP). A number of U.S. politicians had proposed a combining of art and patriotism which inspired FDR to create the program. The purpose was not just to supplement artists incomes but to rally the sinking spirits of the American citizens. For an artist to be considered for the FAP, they had to apply for Home Relief to prove they were impoverished, and then submit samples of their work to show they were actively creating art at the time. Once accepted into the program an artist's stipend was $24 per week. By 1936 there were 6000 artists employed by the WPA.

During the Depression, the federal  government paid writers, photographers, painters, and scupltors to chronicle life in America and at the same time beautify public buildings across the country. The WPA was much larger than the art project, WPA workers built state parks, roads, bridges, dams and other vital contributions to our infrastructure and more. They cooked and served lunches to schoolchildren, and taught adults to read. But the art project, particularly the murals, left a real legacy depicting men and women at work reflecting the time and place and the values of Americans as the world changed into the modern era. And they remain so today in many places.

Many artists created posters for public health programs, tourism, and educational purposes. At the time Social Realism was the favored style and the WPA preferred figurative work rather than the newly developing genre of Abstract art. It was a challenge to some artists who were working in abstract art but the program also helped those artists develop and later to define the Abstract Expressionist era following WWII such as Jackson Pollock, Diego Rivera and Willem de Kooning.

Murals are probably the most recognized survivng results from the WPA program. Artists had to submit sketches and compete against eachother for the work. There were an estimated 2,566 murals commissioned by the federal government  mostly for post offices, but also schools and other government buildings around the country where they could be appreciated by everyone. Many of the murals were actually oil on canvas paintings afixed to the wall. One of the best known post office wall murals is "Woodsman in the Woods of Maine" by Waldo Peirce originally installed in the post office in Westbrook, Maine.

The painting, the whole wall - door and all - was removed from the Westbrook post office in 1980 when the building was demolished and is now residing in the Portland Museum of Art on loan from the U.S.Postal Service.

                    Another Maine mural in a school in Portland.

                              Mural in a library in Queens, NY

The FAP disbanded on June 30th, 1943. In December of that year the federal government auctioned off thousands of WPA funded artworks in a warehouse in Queens, NY. Paintings were sold by the pound, not individually. It is reported that a plumber purchased large quantities of the canvases in bulk for the purpose of insulating pipes but discovered when the pipes got hot the paint let off bad smells. Framers  also bought in quantity paying about $3.00 per canvas and acquiring some works by artists who later became famous after WWII such as Jackson Pollock.

Roosevelt's WPA put about 8.5 million people to work - about 1/5 of the nation's adults between 1935 and 1943. The FAP created over 100,000 paintings and 18,000 sculptures. These works of art are now turning 75 years old. For many years this work had been virtually ignored, not maintained very well, and even destroyed. The living history of this work is dying out leaving the artwork on it's own to speak for itself. Thankfully people are starting to realize what they have in their communities and are working to restore and preserve this work. If you are lucky enough to have a WPA mural in your community, go visit it and spend a few moments appreciating the artists who left the legacy for you and the governmental leaders who had the foresight  to give them the opportunity to create it.

Happy 1st Birthday Sanctuaries, Dreams and Shadows!

My blog, Sanctuaries, Dreams and Shadows, is one year old this week, and I am so very proud of that! I never imagined I would have a blog. I even thought that the word "blog" was silly, or to say you were a "blogger"! And the whole idea of web diaries basically seemed narcissistic, as does the entire social networking craze in some ways! Besides, who cares what I am doing every minute of every day? And why is that important? Yet I do go to Facebook occasionally, and Facebook Networked Blogs and I use Twitterfeed for my blog, and Zimbio, Blogflux, Creative Souls, Indiepublic and others, and sites like Pingoat to ping my latest blogs. So why do I do it?

I write because I am, just as I make art and garden because I am. I have always written, from journaling and poetry to personal interest stories for newspapers, including hockey stories in regional newspapers when my son was playing hockey. Initially I chose to blog as a way to promote my etsy.com shop. But very soon, I realized I was blogging because I loved it and the sense of being connected to a larger consciousness it provided.

Being an artist or a writer is solitary, isolated work by it's very nature. It draws people who are content in spending long hours alone with one's muse. As a child, making art was an essential escape from an abusive home life to a world of my own making where I felt safe and secure. In my fifth decade I learned that no place is really safe from heartbreak, no solitary life isolated enough to hush a grieving soul. But my art allows me to tell my stories, guides me through the dark times, and express my true self - as does writing. It has awakened my voice, it feeds my soul and say's, "Here I am!"And that's why I do what I do - because I can't not do it. I seek out the timeless, beautiful, miraculous moments of life to eclipse the darker places, the moonless shadows that surround the edges of our existence.

One of my passions I have chosen to share with you is my love of poetry. Poetry can be a window to the soul. It can be the sound of a heart breaking, a lover laughing, a child weeping, or a lonely spirit entreating. It can be the sound of the wave washing upon the shore or the reflection of sunlight in the tiny mirrored surface of a dewdrop. Art and Poetry both give us that - the joy and sorrow, pain and healing, and the transcendence over life's adversities. It is the voices of those who came before and who steadfastly still hold a lantern up high to light our way in every generation. I hunger to learn about the people behind the words or the images, to understand why they did what they did. They too probably couldn't not do it.

Blogging is about sharing - one's fascinations and ideas, passions and joys, pain and sorrow. It suits one like me with a solitary life who still has a need to relate to other like-minded individuals. I've always believed my audience would find me for that reason: like-minded individuals reaching out from around the globe. That more than anything is what has kept me blogging. I eagerly anticipate my second year in this endeavor and thank you for joining me along the way! I hope you have enjoyed the journey as much as I have!