- City:
- Sonora, CA
- Site Type:
- Education and Health, Art Works, Schools, Murals
- New Deal Agencies:
- Work Relief Programs, Works Progress Administration (WPA)
- Artist:
- George Post
- Quality of Information:
- Very Good
- Site Survival:
- Extant
Description
This mural “Lumbering, Agriculture and Mining” was moved from the original location to the new Sonora High School Library in 1976:
“Acclaimed watercolor artist George Post was hired by the [Works Progress Administration] in 1936. His first assignment was a mural to be painted for Sonora High School depicting industries in Tuolumne County, which included lumber, mining and agriculture.
Post created the only oil painting of his career, a mural eight feet high by 36 feet long, which is still in the Sonora High library today.
The work took him a month and a half to complete, Post said in a 1964 interview with the Archives of American Art, part of the Smithsonian Institution. He was paid $90 per month as a WPA artist.
‘It was a most wonderful sort of experience to have so much freedom and to be getting $90 per month, which in those days was a fortune because we were all getting along on so little money,’ Post said. ‘I also think that the amount that was accomplished, like the parks and the roads and the conservation, was remarkable and I certainly feel that the Art Project gave an awful lot of American artists the stimulus and the start that they needed at this time.'”
– Lacey Peterson, The Union Democrat
Source notes
Lacey Peterson. The Union Democrat. January 30, 2009.At this Location:
Contribute to this Site
We welcome contributions of additional information on any New Deal site.
Submit More Information or Photographs for this New Deal Site
Join the Conversation