Post Office Mural – Bremerton WA

Description

The post office contains a 4′ x 24′ 1938 Section of Fine Arts oil-on-canvas mural by Ernest Norling entitled “Northwest Logging.” The mural was restored in 1994-95.

“Norling completed two Washington State Post Office murals during the New Deal period, one in Bremerton and one in Prosser. He also painted documentary images of the state’s CCC camps for the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP).

During an oral history interview in 1964, Norling reflected on his knowledge of the logging industry and how that helped him with the mural:

“I knew pretty well the lumbering industry. I’d work when I went to high school. I came out to Seattle and worked one summer in the logging camp and I knew the logging industry fairly well. So I used the logging scene mainly in my work because it hadn’t been overdone and I felt it should be a project that should be and I’m glad I did not because it got into – now, instead of the old axle and hand saw and I don’t think it was quite as picturesque as…I felt at the time that that should be preserved.. I’m glad I did now because I had a theme that nobody else was using and it represented our industry very much at that time. We were very much of a timber state.”
From: Oral history interview with Ernest Ralph Norling, 1964 Oct. 30, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.”

(depts.washington.edu)

The artist was paid $1080 for the work.