One of America’s dying traditions, or so it seems to be dying, is visiting our backyards: National Parks. I’ll get into that subject later but for now I wanted to share these amazing art pieces created by an aritst who goes by the name of Ranger Doug.
The history behind these posters is quite a story. You can read about why the WPA created these posters in the first place here. Here’s a little excerpt from his website:
Between 1935 and 1943 the WPA’s Federal Art Project printed over two million posters in 35,000 different designs to stir the public’s imagination for education, theater, health, safety, and travel. Due to their fragile nature only two thousand posters have survived to this day; less than one tenth of one percent!
Ranger Doug’s Enterprises is the only source for faithful reproductions of WPA National Park serigraphed posters. Originally produced between 1938 and 1941, these sixteen stunning historical posters have been painstakingly restored, one screen at a time and are now offered as silkscreened prints.
I’ve managed to collect nearly all of these stunning prints in postcard form. As some of you know, I’m an avid National Park traveler. Not only for what each park’s beauty has to offer but each park has its own fascinating history behind it that I love learning about. One of my favorite parks has to be Glacier National Park in northern Montana. I’ve never felt so small and insignificant in this universe before when I was there. Absolutely breathtaking. What are some of your favorite National Parks or National Monuments here in America?
“Car art” is always a contentious subject for me, there’s alot of cartoonish colored pencil stuff out there that Road & Track likes to pass off as “fine art”. If there’s one thing i’ve tried to showcase in my livery posts, it’s that the geometric body of the car itself makes for a great canvas.
Earlier last week, fellow car porn addict (although he gets paid for his addiction) Jim Lau sent me the innocuous “you’ve seen this, right?” message. Above are some examples of Ricardo Santos’ work, and I think they’re absolutely fantastic. You’ll notice some farmilar ‘faces’ from alot of the car posts I’ve done here on the blog, needless to say I’ve solved the problem of hanging up pictures of cars on my wall without looking pubescent.
These prints all come in a variety of sizes & formats, the stretched canvas is barking at me and the moths futzing outside my window will soon find a nice warm home in my wallet. You can find all of Ricardo’s works seen above over on his Society 6 page.
Checked in on old favorite Network Osaka today and was reminded of what an excellent body of poster work he has amassed over the last few years. Always great to see modern designers paying homage to such classic design ideals. More over here.
Selections of Anni Albers’ pieces from the NGA archive. Incredibly, most of these were created when Albers was in her 70’s. Really inspiring to see someone productive throughout their entire lifetime. I sincerely hope I’m as motivated at that age.
In case you missed the latest newsletter (sign up here), there are two new prints available at the shop. First is the Dusty Brown poster featuring artwork from their This City is Killing Me EP. It’s a limited edition giclee available in four formats. More info / purchase here.
There’s also a very limited run of prints from the Ghostly 10 year show at Seattle Decibel Fest. This edition is limited to 200 pieces, 11×17″, $15. More info / purchase here.
