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Artist Biographies
Henry Bernstein (American, 1912 – 1962)
Detroit-area painter Henry Bernstein studied with John Carroll at the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts in the early 1930s. He began showing in the Annual Exhibitions for Michigan Artists at the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1931 and continued to be represented throughout the 1940s. Bernstein was extremely active in the New Deal art programs, receiving commissions through TRAP, the Section as well as the Michigan WPA/FAP. For the latter he produced several murals including three for the Michigan School for the Blind in Lansing (now missing). Besides the mural for the East Lansing post office, now in the MSU Libraries, Bernstein painted two others, On Board the Car Ferry ‘Ann Arbor No. 4 (1941) in Frankfort and Chemistry (1942) in Midland. At the end of the Depression, Bernstein obtained a position in the automobile industry but continued to exhibit his paintings.
Clivia Calder (American, born 1909)
Clivia Calder studied with Samuel Cashwan at the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts and with William Zorach in New York at the Art Students League. She was the ceramic supervisor for the WPA/FAP in Michigan and received numerous commissions under the Project, including Sea Nymph (1938) at the Michigan League in Ann Arbor and Children Reading (1938) at MSU.
Samuel Cashwan (American, 1900 – 1988)
Born in Cherkassy, Russia in 1900, Samuel Cashwan studied at the Architectural League in New York and with Antoine Bourdelle in Paris. He taught sculpture for many years at the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts, was the supervisor for the State of Michigan WPA Art Program from 1936 to 1942, and then worked as a designer for the General Motors Corporation. Cashwan appreciated the importance of the WPA program not only for its economic support of sculptors during the harsh years of the Depression, but for its social benefits as well: “During my first acquaintance with the Project, I was deeply impressed with the many possibilities for development and the good that could be derived by the public from its activities … The greatest good a sculptor can perform is to create, not for a museum or a private collection, but for the common meeting places of men, to enhance and ennoble everyday life.”1 Cashwan’s stylized, abstract sculptures decorate many of the buildings at Michigan State University as well as reliefs for St. Aloysius and the Edwin Denby Memorial, both in Detroit.
Frank Cassara (Italian, born 1913)
Italian born painter and printmaker Frank Cassara studied under Walter Speck, Reginald Bennett at the Detroit School of Art from 1933-36. He also studied fresco painting with Jean Paul Slusser. In 1938 he was appointed supervisor of Michigan’s easel painting section of the WPA/FAP. Cassara for this program including at the Thompson School in Highland Park, the Water Conditioning Plant in Lansing, Fort Wayne in Detroit, a post office mural in east Detroit, and another in Sandusky. He began teaching at the University of Michigan in 1947, earned a Master’s degree in Design in 1954. In 1958 he studied at Stanley W. Hayter’s Atelier 17 in Paris. From the late 1950’s on he focused on print and paper making. His work is in several Michigan museum collections, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the Stedelijik Museum, Amsterdam, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. A sketch of a woman’s head from the Water Conditioning Plant mural is part of Kresge Art Museum’s collection.
Carl H. Frezell (American, 1901 – 1970)
Carl H. Frezell was born in 1901 in Hurley, Wisconsin. He was largely self-taught, having attended commercial art classes in Chicago for only three months and a correspondence art school in Washington, D.C. The WPA Bessemer Courthouse boardroom mural is his only known commission and there is no indication that he participated in any gallery exhibitions; however, small easel paintings – family portraits, landscapes, waterscapes and floral arrangements – were in his family’s possession at the time of his death. A working class man, Frezell delivered boxes for the Railway Express in Ironwood, Michigan and operated a 1,000 foot cable in the iron mines in Hurley, Wisconsin. In 1954 he and his wife moved to Detroit where he worked as the maintenance engineer in the apartment building in which they lived. Frezell died of cancer in 1970.
Charles Pollock (American, 1902 – 1988)
Charles Pollock began his career as a social realist, studying with Thomas Hart Benton at New York’s Art Students League and revering the works of Mexican Muralists Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco. In the 1930s he worked with Ben Shawn on the Special Skills Division of the Resettlement Division supervising mural and craft projects in the South and Midwest. From there he moved to Detroit where he became supervisor for the mural painting and graphic arts division of the WPA/FAP. In the 1940s, however, Pollock abandoned his social realist approach to art for abstraction and color field painting, a result either of the times or the influence of his renowned brother Jackson Pollock.
Charles Pollock taught calligraphy, printmaking, typography, and design in the Art Department at Michigan State University from 1942 to 1965. Works by Charles Pollock in the Kresge Art Museum collection include prints from the 1930s as well as the abstract painting #95 from 1967.
Edgar Yaeger (American, 1904 - 1997)
Edgar Yaeger was a prolific painter for the Michigan FAP, completing both easel paintings and several major mural commissions in the Detroit area. Educated at the Detroit School of Fine and Applied Arts, he traveled and studied in Europe and then returned to Michigan. His style, a combination of Cubist structuring and American Scene representation, is one of pleasing color harmonies and stylized patterns that was well suited for public murals. As a result, Yaeger’s work was in great demand by institutions sponsoring WPA art. He completed murals for Detroit’s Brodhead Armory, Detroit Public Lighting Commission Building (building destroyed), Grosse Pointe South High School, West Quad Dormitory at the University of Michigan and other buildings. Yaeger worked in illustration, automotive design, taught painting and designed stage sets. The Kresge Art Museum has 88 works by Yaeger, including many preliminary sketches of his WPA murals.
Architects
Bowd – Munson Architects
Bowd – Munson Architects were based in Lansing, Michigan, the result of architects Edwyn Bowd and Orlie Munson joining together. Previously Bowd was selected as a university architect after his design for Old Botany in 1892. As a university architect his designs include Marshall Hall, Agriculture Hall, the 1913 portion of Giltner Hall, IM Recreative Sports Circle, and Spartan Stadium. Bowd-Munson designed the majority of campus buildings until 1940. The style of many of these is Collegiate Gothic.
Ralph R. Calder Architect and Associates
Ralph R. Calder Architect and Associates was formed in 1945. The firm has worked on many projects at state universities across Michigan, including at Eastern Michigan, Western Michigan, Wayne State and University of Michigan. At MSU it designed Williams Hall, Olin Memorial Health Center, the 1955 Library, the Music Building, the Paolucci Building, Landon Hall, Kresge Art Center (1959) and several of the residence halls and buildings in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The firm’s most recent project on campus is the addition to the International Center.
Orlie Munson
While with Bowd-Munson Orlie Munson designed the sleek streamlined art deco building on South Washington Avenue in downtown Lansing that housed Knapp’s Department Store (1937-39). After Bowd-Munson, the Munson firm designed several buildings, primarily in the Collegiate Gothic style on MSU’s campus including the Auditorium (1940), Jenison Field House (1940), Berkey Hall (1947), Agricultural Engineering Building (1948), and Anthony Hall (1955).
1Francis V. O’Conner, ed., Art for the Millions: Essays from the 1930s by Artists and Administrators of the WPA Federal Art Project (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, Ltd., 1973), 88.
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