Fruit and Plant
description: A half circular table is placed against the wall. On top of the table is a pile of fruits,pairs, apples and lemons, spilling out of a wooden basket that is sideways. To the left of the basket and behind the fruit is a potted plant that appears to be a cactus. There is a clear reflection in the table of the objects on the table creating a shine to the table. There are visible brush strokes on the canvas which indicates that the painter had impressionist influences. About the Artist: The son of Lithuanian immigrants, Copen grew up in Coney Island, NY and worked in the family business. He showed his art at a 1939 WPA show at Federal Extension Gallery, Long Beach, NY with a theme of farms and country life; his watercolor was entitled “Curb Market.” Along with NDG artists Fred Adler and Ben Delman, Copen was chosen for a 1941 exhibit at the USDA’s Surplus Marketing Department, in New York City called “Market Scenes”; his paintings were entitled “Street Scene” and “City Markets.” At his death in 2002, Copen donated 2,700 pieces of African art to Colgate University’s Longyear Museum of Anthropology that he had collected during 1960s-90. 1 more image at FAP.
creator: Copen, Herman, 1908-2002
source: New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18140
publisher: Federal Art Project
date: 1937-06
contributor: Ritz, Abigail (photography) Ramsay, Elizabeth (biography) Cooper, Ken (biography)
format: jpeg, 841 KB jpeg, 8.5 MB
type: Still Image

Angler
description: A large and elegant boat dominates this scene, immediately drawing the viewer’s attention. Those few people visible in Jacks' print, scattered around the docks, appear almost ghost-like, as if incorporated into the backdrop. Their small number and otherworldly quality give the setting a sense of emptiness, making the composition feel mythical or even ominous. The Angler sits at a dock that is otherwise barren, and it is the only vessel present, further emphasizing the isolation of the scene. Jacks' use of space in her lithograph is particularly interesting, as it highlights the relationship between different elements. Small figures on an empty dock draw attention to the surrounding desolate space, creating a tension between isolation and the expansive landscape. The boat’s overwhelming size compared to the people suggests visual weight, whereas the figures appear vulnerable and hidden in the background, reinforcing the boat’s symbolic importance. The Angler itself floats on what appears to be windy water, with small, calm ripples outlined in sharp black. Overhead, the sky shifts from light to dark, moving from the top left to the right side and guiding the viewer’s gaze across the scene. This shift in tone moves the mood from calm to ominous. About the Artist Mabel Wellington Jack was born in 1899 in New York City. During her early life, she lived in Ohio and traveled frequently with her parents on one of the last showboats to sail down the Mississippi River. She was educated in Midwest private schools, where she received several art scholarships. From roughly 1935 to 1943, she worked as an artist for the New York Art Project and the Federal Art Project (FAP), also creating artworks for the New View Hospital and Home during this time. She was mainly a printmaker who experimented with bold and dramatic nautical themes during the WPA era. Like another of her works from this period, Swan Dive (1935), they can be appreciated as “representative of a new world into which …
creator: Jack, Mabel Wellington (1899-1975)
source: New Deal Museum, Mt. Morris NY Object #FA 48
publisher: Federal Art Project
date: c. 1936
contributor: Harrington, Gwenyth
format: jpeg, 693 KB
type: Still image

10 and Out
description: This painting depicts a boxing match, in which one of the boxers successfully knocks out his opponent. The victor, standing upright on the right side sporting turquoise shorts, looks confident and strong as he watches his opponent on the ground along with the referee. His opponent is curled up on the floor of the ring, his face downturned and covered by his arms. The colors are vibrant, and the work’s shadows create a realistic effect. Braverman's painting takes on new significance when considered in relation to economic conditions during the 1930s. About the Artist: Born in New York City, Braverman’s subsequent life tracks alongside the changing fortunes of radical politics in America. He appears to have lived in Chicago, studying in Paris with André L’hote, but he also was listed as Chairman of the People’s Institute in Toledo, OH during 1911. Perhaps his debut as an artist began in 1907, at age 19, with political cartoons published in To-Morrow Magazine: on subjects like plutocracy and class-based sexual politics. During the 1910s “Barney” was Associate Editor and Circulation Manager for The Progressive Woman in Chicago. It was founded as The Socialist Woman in 1907 by Josephine Conger-Kaneko and in 1913 would become The Coming Nation before folding in 1914. He produced the magazine’s masthead much of its political art: on child labor, domestic work, and women in trade unions. Meanwhile, Braverman also was drawing political cartoons for The Masses (1912) and publishing pamphlets like “Suffragists, Watch Out for the Wolf!” (1913). After passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, and as socialist unity fragmented under the duress of Palmer Raids and systematic anti-red legislation, Braverman became disillusioned and moved into poster art and advertising. By the 1920s he worked for the Curtis Company agency in Detroit, MI and then in 1926 the Hamman group in Oakland, CA. During his time in Detroit, Braverman played an important role in smuggling copies of James Jo…
creator: Braverman, Barnet, b. 1888
source: New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18124
publisher: Federal Art Project
date: 1937
contributor: Ritz, Abigail (photography) Sheedy, Marianna (biography) Cooper, Ken (biography)
format: jpeg, 980 KB jpeg, 12.1 MB
type: Still image

100 Years Pass
description: A neoclassical mansion, accessorized by ancestral family tree, looms over a woman wearing a long dress at lower left. Upon closer viewing the coherence of this scene breaks down; she's carrying an axe in her left hand, a la Lizzie Borden, along with something in her right hand we cannot see. Moreover, any attempt to inhabit a romantic tableau of the past is undermined by an historical marker on the front lawn--or is it a 1930s highway sign?--along with an airplane flying overhead. About the Artist: Born in Middletown, CT and trained at the Hartford Art School, Guy was among the earliest Americans to see European surrealism via a 1931 show at the Wadsworth Atheneum on the “Newer Super-Realism.” Thereafter he was strongly influenced by painters like Salvador Dali, Giorgio de Chirico, and José Clemente Orozco. At the same time, Guy’s work was characterized by a sharp satirical edge that may have owed something to his own work experience—after high school he had tried selling rugs and typewriters; was a sailor and census-taker—and to his political activities, including membership in the radical John Reed Club. In 1930 he helped stage a 1930 labor play entitled Strike; amid unsuccessful attempts to stage it in New York, Guy remained in the city. During the Great Depression Guy was among the leaders of the Unemployed Artists Group (later renamed the Artists Union), which advocated government support for the arts and later resisted proposed cuts to the Federal Arts Program. Guy’s paintings were exhibited at the Wadsworth Atheneum Annex (1931), the ACA Gallery (1937), American Artists’ Congress (1937), a “Fight War and Fascism” show at the La Salle Gallery (1937), Federal Art Gallery (1938), Boyer Gallery (1939), and Ferargil Galleries (1941). In 1936 he married the respected woodblock artist Clara Skinner, and they co-exhibited at several shows. Guy also undertook public mural projects, referenced only as located in Mexico and “New York churches” (Older). One that is known…
creator: Guy, James Meikle, 1909-1983
source: New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18167
publisher: Federal Art Project
date: 1936
contributor: Ritz, Abigail (photography) Cooper, Ken (biography)
format: jpeg, 1.3 MB jpeg, 9.6 MB jpeg, 1.2 MB
type: Still image

A Painting's Work is Never Done
description: Promotional poster created for a May 2026 exhibition, added to OpenValley as artwork for the landing page of a five-part exhibit.
creator: Theel, Rose
publisher: New Deal Museum
date: 2026-05-08
contributor: Theel, Rose
format: png, 5.6 MB
type: Still image

A Peaceful Valley
description: Powell depicts a calm, rural landscape, with a flowing stream that starts in the foreground and curves across the canvas. The colors of the work become hazier, and brushstrokes become more organic as the eye moves from the foreground to the background, utilizing the technique of atmospheric perspective. The waters appear still, with bits of rock and greenery peeking out from the surface, providing more visual interest to the foreground. On the left side of the canvas, closer to the middle ground, there is a patch of land with foliage and a cluster of trees. consisting mostly of green, with bits of warmer colors dispersed throughout the bushes. The trunks and limbs of the trees are dark, creating a contrast against the soft green of the leaves. On the right side of the painting, another patch of land sits. There is less contrast in this area, as it is approaching closer to the background. On this side, we can see the figure of what appears to be a farmer and a goat-driven wagon. Due to the loose strokes used to create these figures, they almost seem to blend into the surrounding landscape. The painting embodies its title, as while it depicts a scene that can be interpreted as a farmer doing his job, it is simultaneously calm and serene. It reflects Powell’s later life, when he would be creating works for the WPA. He was older, and instead of traveling and doing grander things as he had in his younger years, he had more or less settled down. The farmer in the background may represent Powell himself, as while he is still working, the life he lives is much calmer than it may have been in the past, and this difference in style between this painting and some of his older works further shows this. About the Artist Powell was an American painter and muralist known primarily for his atmospheric landscape paintings. Born in Van Wert County, Ohio, he developed an early interest in art and eventually pursued formal training. Over the course of his career, he became associated w…
creator: Powell, Arthur Emery (1864 - 1956)
source: New Deal Museum, Mount Morris NY Object #FA 231
publisher: Federal Art Project
date: 1937
contributor: Papapietro, Isabella (description and biography) Helquist, Morgan (photography)
format: jpeg, 1.7 MB jpeg, 1.3 MB
type: Still image

American Farm
description: This striking landscape is organized around the single arc of a highway that divides the space into two sectors: above, a brightly lit realm of forests and mountain ridges; below, a shadowed landscape of brown fields, a diseased tree, and a dilapidated farm house. Clearly, the travails of American farmers during the 1930s has influenced Mira’s subject matter. The highway itself is a pristine band of white futurity, guarded on one side by rails and on the other by electric or phone lines (which the farm conspicuously lacks). Improbably, we see three cars on the road along with two people walking alongside; what may be a farmer watches them walk away. About the Artist: Born in Italy, Mira immigrated to the US in 1904. He attended the Art Students League, the Beaux Arts School, and the National Academy of Design, where he studied with Ivan Olinsky; his works were exhibited at several Corcoran Museum biennials. As a young man of twenty-two, Mira and a fellow artist named Joseph Perna planned to hitchhike across the United States, painting pictures as they went. They paused in Gettysburg, PA, to paint several battlefield landscapes (Gettysburg Times 10 June 1922: 2), and then Mira was invited by one driver to paint a portrait of his parents in Detroit. “After a few months,” Mira recollected, “I became so absorbed in my work that I had completely forgotten about California. By this time my companion had become homesick and he induced me to return with him.” Returning to New York, Mira was best known for his cityscapes of lower Manhattan and capturing “the way busy people see it...None of those breath-taking shots cameramen contrive of towers and infinity, which no New Yorker sees in actuality” (Los Angeles Times 31 Jan. 1943: 35). 18 more images at The Athenaeum. 2 more images at FAP.
creator: Mira, Alfred S., 1900-1981
source: New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18208
publisher: Federal Art Project
date: 1935-1940
contributor: Ritz, Abigail (photography) Cooper, Ken (biography)
format: jpeg, 887 KB jpeg, 11.6 MB jpeg, 655 KB
type: Still image

American Wood Cock
description: A pair of woodcocks is pictured somewhat outside of their preferred grassy habitat, beside a cozy opening in a tree trunk. Although they often are associated with spring, the presence of freshly fallen leaves seems to indicate a moment just prior to their migration away from this scene. Hand-written at the bottom of the watercolor are Nakamizo’s poetic words: “A game bird that is not distrubed by the agriculture. Bird would come silently some April night, and from it then would disappear some October.” About the Artist: Born in Fukui Prefecture, Japan, Nakamizo—whose name sometimes was spelled “Fugi”—immigrated to the US in 1907, living in Grand Rapids, MI and working as a decorator. He later moved to New York and studied at the Art Students League with Frank DuMond and Joseph Pennell. During the early 1920s, he appears to have created an etching of the medical researcher Dr. Hideyo Noguchi that hung in the Nippon Club, New York (Piper). By the 1930s he was fairly well known, especially for his etchings of birds, and exhibited at places like the League Gallery (1933), Montross Gallery (1934), the Brooklyn Museum (1935), the Art Institute of Chicago (1935); and the Carl Fischer Gallery (1936). In 1936 he contributed photographs and illustrations to feminist author Baroness Shidzue Ishimoto’s East Way, West Way: A Modern Japanese Girlhood. In 1943, Nakamizo’s etching “Emblem of Strength and Courage” was chosen for a national exhibition sponsored by the group Artists for Victory; this lithograph of an American eagle surrounded by warplanes may have been ironic, since he was confined at a Japanese internment camp during World War II. 2 works at Smithsonian American Art Museum. 3 works at Lowe Art Museum. 6 works at Queens Library. 1 work at the National Gallery of Art. 6 more images at FAP. Sources Consulted: Jean Piper, “Scientist Acts Like Human Dynamo,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle 6 Mar. 1927: 85; Ellen G. Landau, Artists for Victory: An Exhibition Catalog (Library of Congr…
creator: Nakamizo, Fuji, 1889-1950
source: New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18219
publisher: Federal Art Project
date: 1937-08-24
contributor: Ritz, Abigail (photography) Cooper, Ken (biography)
format: jpeg, 1.1 MB jpeg, 10 MB
type: Still image

Anemones
description: A table, whose covering appears to have been warped, becomes the space for an arrangement of anemones in a copper vase suspended by a thin spiraled black steel stand. An ashtray accompanies the flowers on the table, standing in the foreground. Cool blues and greens are incorporated on the ashtray, and deep purple, reds, and greens predominate in the flowers. An excess amount of leaves, uncommon for anemones, are included in the bouquet, spiraling down the vase and onto the ashtray. The structured, stable and neutral background space, combined with the possibly unstable vase and table, juxtaposes the stability of the space and time period as a whole. About the Artist: We haven’t located much reliable information about this artist. Please contact us if you’re able to help. 2 works, as Bertha Stefano, for the Index of American Design.
creator: Stefano, Berthe
source: New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Counsel on the Arts Object #FA18275
publisher: Federal Art Project
date: 1935-1937
contributor: Ritz, Abigail (photographer) Caldwell, Julia (biography)
format: jpeg, 1.3 MB jpeg, 15.5 MB
type: Still image

Apples
description: We look upon a remarkably minimalist still life--sixteen apples upon a wooden board or table--but by the time of Adler's painting they were highly charged objects due to the thousands of minimally employed apple vendors on New York streets during the Great Depression. Keeping this in mind, we see an insistence upon each apple being represented individually, and for that matter each row of wood laminated into the wooden board. Adler's light and colors are direct, with very little shadow. About the Artist: Born in New York, Adler was the son of Russian immigrants—his father a dressmaker and eventual NDG artist Joseph Adler. Fred studied two years at National Academy of Design, then two more at the Art Students League with Raphael Soyer. At age twenty he was employed by the Federal Art Project and assigned to a Civilian Conservation Corps project in Milford, IA where he “sketch[ed] characteristic moments in camp life” (Milford Mail 6 Sept 1934: 2). In 1940 his “Still Life With Herring” was selected for a Musuem of Modern Art traveling exhibition called “35 Under 35.” Along with NDG artists Herman Copen and Ben Delman, Adler’s painting “Avenue C market” was included in a 1941 show focused upon “Market Scenes,” and held at the USDA’s Surplus Marketing Department in New York. 1 painting at Smithsonian Museum of American Art. 8 more images at FAP.
creator: Adler, Fred[erick M], 1914-2012
source: New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18099
publisher: Federal Art Project
date: 1937-10-20
contributor: Ritz, Abigail (photography) Cooper, Ken (biography)
format: jpeg, 1.1 MB
type: Still image