Public Works Administration

Mt. Baldy from Lake Arrowhead

Franz Geritz-1928

A few weeks ago, my wife had the Antique's Road Show on PBS.  During the show a lady had 3 large block prints that she said she saved from being thrown away.  They were prints of Grain Mills and other architecture from the Mid-west.  The antique dealer that was telling the lady about these prints said they were made by artist hired by the PWA, during the New Deal.  A few months prior to finding out about these prints, which by the way were now worth I think about 2000.00, I was at the North Carolina History Museum in Raleigh, NC.  They had a special exhibit of Photography done by PWA Photographers around North Carolina, again during the New Deal.  Oh, here is the actual prints from the Antique's Road Show, just found them.  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/archive/199802A32.html  These are really good they remind me of the works by the painter Charles Sheeler and Edward Hopper a bit.  

Charles Sheeler, Ballet Mechanique, 1931

This brings me to my desire to learn more about the printmakers of the PWA.  Who were they?  How were they picked?  What images did they portray?  When doing some research on this using Google... I found a simple quote from Roosevelt:

    "New Deal art would be art that was: …native, human, eager and alive… that was painted for the people of this country by their own kind in their own country, and painted about things they know and look at often and have touched and loved."  http://www.articlesandtexticles.co.uk/2009/04/07/the-public-works-of-art-project-pwa/

So if anyone has anymore info about this subject I would really like love to have you share!