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.
Clifton Meek
Illustration, Sculpture
1888 – 1973
WPA sculptor and cartoonist, whose readings became the basis for the Village Room, a coffee house and forum in which new ideas were discussed in Silvermine.
- Biography/Description of Work
A mid-Westerner, Meek drew his first comic work in 1911. Shortly thereafter, c.1914, he moved to the Silvermine area of Norwalk, and began providing illustrations for New York papers, including the strip Grindstone George. By the 1920s, Meek had become a freelance artist, submitting comics with mice as subjects to magazines such as Life, Puck and Judge. He was an early member of the Silvermine Guild of Artists (c.1922). Seeking a new form of expression, in the early 1930s Meek began to create ironwork, and in 1935 made iron signs for schools and public buildings in Connecticut under the WPA program.
- Sources view
- Uconn database, http://wpa.cslib.org/index.php/525/meek-clifton/
- Associated Resource(s)
- n/a