I began this project in May of 2020. At the time (and still) United States Postal Service had been hit hard by the pandemic. Controlling elements of the Federal Government (the now former president and Republican Senate) did not want to provide aid to the service. The USPS does not depend on the federal government (it is 0% funded by taxpayer dollars) but it suffers financially because of rules the government has imposed on it.
It may seem insignificant, but if we all sent just a few letters a week, we could help ensure that our daily, free mail delivery service continues.
I wrote the sentence above in May 2020. Since then, I’ve learned that there are loads of people who depend on the USPS for low cost prescription medication delivery, for cashiers checks and money orders to pay rent, for deliveries to locations that commercial couriers won’t visit, even for their very lives (some shut-ins see no one but their letter carrier daily and the carriers often notice when something is wrong).
So write your grandma, d…arnit! Or your friend or cousin or your worst enemy. Just send a letter already.
Well, here we are. It's a year and some change after I swore a solemn social media oath to send one card or letter per week in order to support the United States Postal Service. The service still needs our help. Millions of people who depend on the postal service for...
Post office muralist, Edward Winter, was better known as an enamelist than a painter. He created one post office mural: Flora and Fauna of the Region (Cassville, Missouri), which is, I suspect, the only post office mural made of porcelain and enamel -- though I could...
German-born Joseph Paul Vorst is the first post office muralist I've come across who was a Mormon. Vorst, who was 33 when he immigrated to the US, is also the only post office mural I've come across whose art education was exclusively outside of the US. Vorst created...
Painter, lithographer and draftsman, Ross Eugene Braught was called “the greatest living American draftsman” during his lifetime by his friend and colleague, Thomas Hart Benton. (source) From the comfort of my fragile glass house, I do like to toss a few pebbles at...
Byron Burford was an artist and writer. He studied with Grant Wood in Iowa, where he struck up a friendship with Kurt Vonnegut (as my best friend met Kurt Vonnegut, that means I'm two people away from Byron in the Kevin Bacon game -- very useful...). You can see...
S. Douglass Crockwell was one of several post office muralists to also work for the Saturday Evening Post. You can see examples of his work at the websites for the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the American Art Archives, and the National Museum of American...
Julien Binford was another School of the Art Institute of Chicago alum. Apparently, he dabbled (at least) in fashion design (based on this Google Arts and Culture page), though I'm not sure what it has to do with John Lennon. You can see examples of his work on the...
There's something fishy about the search results for "Henry La Cagnina." Can you spot it? While it seems he was born in Brooklyn, his time in the Florida Keys seems to have made quite an impact on his work. La Cagnina made one post office mural: Harvest (Crystal...
Stefan Hirsch, like many artists of his time, worked across several genres. I, of course, am most drawn to his surrealist and precisionist works. You can see examples of his work at websites for the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Whitney, and the National...
John McCrady was a little more well known than many of the post office muralists I've mentioned during this project, despite the fact that he died relatively young. You can see examples of his work, many of which had some subtle (and not-so-subtle) sketchy to them, at...
The existence of a living painter named Richard Jansen makes researching Richard H. Jansen (on the web) a bit difficult. Richard H. Jansen was, of course, a post office muralist. Like many of the postoffice muralists, Jansen seems to have at spent time in the midwest...
Today, I offer you another COVID Card first: Alfred Sessler is the first post office muralist to pop-up on the Antiques Roadshow website. You can see more examples of his work on the websites for Wisconsin Visual Art Achievement Awards, Luther College Fine Arts...
In the midst of so much pain and injustice, it's good to remember the good things that have come out of Minnesota -- like Elof Wedin and Minnowpedia. I don't know if MNOpedia is pronounced Minnow-pedia, but if it's not, it should be. So cute. And, one could argue that...
I must say that I really dig Edmund Lewandowski's work. I'm sure that won't come as a surprise to anyone who checks it out and is also familiar with Sketchy Spaces. Examples of Lewandowski's work can be seen on the websites of the Brooklyn Museum, the Georgia Museum...
Had I discovered Richard Haines's painting, Mrs. Whistler's Naked Niece, before I drew the card inspired by his work, the card might have been quite different. I like the painting. I really like the name. For some reason, it cracks me up. Maybe it's because when the...
Well, bless my Little Britches if it isn't hard to find information about Algot Stenbery online. Not even the Whitney, which lists Stenbery as a participant in a 1944 exhibit, has anything to say about the man. The New York Historical Society says he was born in 1902...
Jean Paul Slusser is a well known name in Ann Arbor, Michigan and my (and his) alma mater, the University of Michigan School of Art and Architecture. He was a professor at the University of Michigan, Director of the University of Michigan Museum of Art, and was a...
David Fredenthal was a Guggenheim Fellow and a very prolific watercolorist, as well as, a fellow Michigander and another post office muralist who led a sadly short life. You can see examples of his work at the websites for the Smithsonian American Art Museum and...
Guy Pène du Bois is one of my more exciting discoveries. I am talking personal discovery, of course. I really like his work. That's all. You can see examples of his work at the websites for the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts, and at the...
Lewis Rubenstein was an artist and educator. Lewis is one of the few post office muralists who lived into the Web Age (is that a thing?) -- enough to have his own website. You can see some of his papers at Vassar's Special Collections Library and at the Smithsonian...
Years ago, I worked for an education organization. My boss had been a teacher, a principal, and a superintendent. One day, some random story about a kid who brought a gun to school caused me to say something like, "Kids have changed." My boss replied, "No, Tina. Kids...
If you've been closely following this project (and following Sketchy Spaces on Facebook or Instagram), then you probably know that I am a big fan of Clarissa Jacobson and her movie, Lunch Ladies. It should then come as no surprise that when I saw post office muralist...
Lester Bentley was a fairly well-known portraitist and muralist from Wisconsin. You can see quite a bit of his work at the website for the Two Rivers Historical Society. Bentley created three post office murals in De Pere, Wisconsin: The Red Pieta, Nicholas Perrot,...
Vladimir Rousseff (give or take an "s") allegedly tried his hand at many careers -- waiter, dishwasher, soda jerk, store clerk, peddler, factory worker, and more -- while saving money to study art. Eventually, he succeeded and enrolled at the School of the Art...
Charles Winstanley Thwaites spent the first half-ish of his life in the midwest, where he worked as an artist, printmaker, and educator. You can see some examples of his work at the website for the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Thwaites created four post office...
If you are a regular COVID Card post reader, you have probably figured out that I don't spend a lot of time researching the subject or topics of my cards. I would love to, but as it takes 2-4 hours to draw each card once a topic or subject is found, and I do have a...
Robert Lepper was an artist, designer, and educator. As an educator, he is said to have encouraged his students to look at every day objects as potential works of art. One of his students, Andy Warhol, excelled at not only looking at every day objects as potential...
How on earth (or any other planet) could I possibly fail to share a paper in which the first word of the introduction is “Sketchy”? Carlos Lopez was one of the few Latinx post office muralists and may have been the only one to have been born in Cuba. Lopez, who died...
The best online bio I found for William Lester Stevens is both fantastic and disappointing. It fantastically opens in a provocative way -- telling the reader they need popcorn before continuing and setting them up to expect something akin to "the sight of a man...
If I am correct, and I rarely am, William Riseman was better known as an interior designer, than a fine artist. Don't get your panties in a fluff, interior designers, you are, indeed artists. It is possible that Mr. Riseman was also an architect. William Riseman, the...
Muralist Saul Levine may be a victim of a second artist named Saul Levine, as far as web-based research goes. A web search on "Saul Levine" returns several results for a controversial film maker and professor and little to nothing about the post office muralist, who...
A long month's worth of COVID Cards and this game is over. It's been fun. Hollis Holbrook how heartily I do enjoy alliteration. Hollis Holbrook created over 500 works of art over his career. What a slacker. That's less than two years of COVID cards. (Hopefully, I...
It never fails that, when you give up the search, the goal presents itself willingly. Okay, so sometimes it fails. Often, even. But in the search for things that really don't matter in the grand scheme of things -- like the answer to that one crossword clue -- the...
Today's card was almost about Peter Blume. Almost. I don't know if I can do a Peter Blume card. I was fascinated by Peter Blume when I was really young -- no older than eight years old. My cousins (thanks, Norma and Karen!) gave me a game called Masterpiece. I may...
No fooling. Sometimes, one has to return to the beginning. Sort of like when you've lost something -- it's always a good idea to, when you feel you're out of places to search, look again in the first place you looked. So it is with the women of post office muraldom (I...
I can't tell you much about Alice Reynolds. The Old Jail Art Center (how great is that name?) seems to have the most extensive online bio of Reynolds who painted one post office mural: Founding and Subsequent Development of Robstown, Texas (shockingly, the mural is in...