The Launch Hero
See America / The Parks
The national-parks series — the parks belonged to everyone, so did the art.
Silkscreened invitations to the people’s park, made by artists on the public payroll in the middle of the Depression. This is the wing’s launch hero: bold, flat, confident inks selling a country its own land back.
1935–1941 · United States
Ranger Naturalist Service, Yellowstone — WPA Federal Art Project, c.1938
A silkscreened invitation to the people’s park.
Grand Canyon National Park — WPA Federal Art Project
The canyon rendered in a handful of flat screens.
Fort Marion National Monument, St. Augustine — WPA Federal Art Project
The oldest masonry fort in the country, sold in six flat colors.
Lassen Volcanic National Park, Ranger Naturalist Service — WPA Federal Art Project
An active volcano, kept as calm as the rest of the series.
Zion National Park, Ranger Naturalist Service — WPA Federal Art Project
The canyon walls, closing the series.
See America
Two riders cross a shallow desert stream, silkscreened flat and bold for the WPA's See America.
See America
An encampment beside still water, screened in a few flat colors for the Travel Bureau's See America pitch.
See America
A waterfall cut into flat silkscreen bands, selling the national parks to Depression-era travelers.
Mystery veils the desert - National parks
A 1934 Park Service lithograph that sells the desert on atmosphere, not a single landmark.
Save our wild life
Dorothy Waugh's 1935 conservation plea, drawn in the flat poster colour of the New Deal park campaign.
The lure of the national parks
Dorothy Waugh, 1934: the national parks sold not as scenery but as a pull you cannot refuse.
The national parks preserve wild life
Two bighorn sheep hold the frame in J. Hirt's WPA silkscreen for the national parks.
Enjoy - don't destroy
Two children picking flowers, and a three-word scolding that has aged remarkably well.
Protect your parks
A 1938 WPA silkscreen pulled on board in Ohio: trees, two words, and no argument.
Please keep the park clean
A boy with a butterfly net leans against a tree, and the whole park asks one quiet favor.
Up where winter calls to play
J. Rivolta's silkscreen turns a winter slope into an invitation you can read from across the room.
Olympic bobsled run, Lake Placid
The Lake Placid bobsled run in flat screened color and pure downhill nerve.
Discover Puerto Rico U.S.A.
Frank S. Nicholson sells an island already inside the borders: Discover Puerto Rico, U.S.A.
Rural Pennsylvania
Katherine Milhous, signed in pencil, gives Pennsylvania's plain-dress children the soft grain of a lithograph stone.
Pueblos of the Southwest
Pueblo dwellings, a cactus and a clay pot, stacked into one flat Southwestern plane by Dorothy Waugh.