Some of the most prestigious art museums in the country own works by post office muralist Ben Cunningham. In the grand scheme of things, that doesn’t necessarily mean much. Many of our museums have thousands of pieces that most of us will never see because they remain in storage. Some, like the Art Institute of Chicago’s Prints and Drawings Library, allow some people (like students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago) to request viewings of certain pieces. When I was a student there, I did not fully appreciate this resource, making use of it only a couple of times on class trips.

I digress… Shocker.

Cunningham appears to have been into geometry and using line, color, perspective, and layering (rather than a lot of detailed rendering) to give visual depth to his works whether abstract or representative-ish. I do like my ishes.

His post office mural, Resources of the Soil, is located in Ukiah, California.