You’ve got to (or at least I’ve got to) love a kid who is inspired by circus posters to become an artist. Delightfully sketchy.
Post office muralist Fletcher Martin was that kid. At the ripe old age of 12, he began work as a printer. Over the course of his life, he would be a lumberjack, a boxer, a Navy man, and a teacher. He was also pretty cheeky. He helped the famous Mexican muralist, Siqueiros, with a mural in Kellogg, Idaho. Siqueiros’s original design depicted a mining accident. We can’t have something like that — no showing the uglier sides of labor. Martin redesigned and painted the mural with a happier scene, including a jackass centered over the postmaster’s door.
Martin also painted Mail Transportation, a post office mural in San Pedro, California.