With its proximity to the cultural hub of New York City and its quieter suburban and rural landscapes, Connecticut was fertile ground for artists and writers in the period of Modernist movements between 1913 and 1979. Many of these cultural figures are well known through biographical and critical studies. Creative Places seeks to show how place played a significant role in creative work, and how in turn the artists and writers influenced communities in Connecticut.
Austin Merrill Mecklem
Painting/Drawing
1894 – 1951
Though the majority of Mecklem’s work was not in Connecticut, he was commissioned during the WPA to portray the characteristic Connecticut Valley crop, shade tobacco, for the Portland Post Office in 1942.
- Biography/Description of Work
Austin Mecklem was born in Califax, Washington, and studied at Washington State University, the San Francisco School of Fine Arts, the Art Students League in New York and in Paris and Holland. He married fellow artist Marianne Greer Appel in 1937 and lived and worked in Woodstock, New York, as part of the Woodstock artists’ colony, Maverick. Mecklem received notable commissions from the WPA, including the painting of murals for the Recorder of Deeds Building in Washington, D. C., the Wrangell, Alaska Custom House and Post Office, and the Post Office in Portland, Connecticut. The latter was toward the end of the Federal Art projects, discontinued at the onset of World War II. Mecklem also taught art at the Museum School in Portland, Oregon, the Art Students League in New York, the Albright Art School in Buffalo, New York, and the Woodstock School of Painting.
- Sources view
- http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artist/?id=3257
http://www.hudsonrivervalley.org/library/pdfs/austin_mecklem.pdf
http://livingnewdeal.org/projects/post-office-mural-shade-grown-tobacco-portland-ct/ - Associated Resource(s)