Collectors Item WPA Art License Plate "Navajo Rug" by Louie Ewing

{Part of the New Mexico Foundation Community Art Plates Series.}

Add a bit of color and class to your car with New Deal Front License Plates and at the same time help NNDPA continue its good works to preserve New Mexico’s New Deal public art.

States That Allow Decorative Front Plates: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia

These colorful, decorative plates depict New Mexico scenes created by New Mexico artists during the New Deal years from 1933-1943. The selected images are part of a vast body of work completed under various New Deal Art Programs. Our beautiful plates are durable, long lasting, and printed on metal.

If you know someone in any of the 19 above states that don’t require a front license plate, why not surprise them with this special gift from the Land of Enchantment? They also make wonderful wall art or exterior placements.

Part of a collection of 200 silkscreen print sets made featuring 15 Navajo blankets in the Laboratory of Anthropology Collection in Santa Fe. Displayed at multiple sites in NM.

Louie Ewing joined the WPA's Federal Art Project working under Russell Vernon Hunter. In the late 1930s the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the Federal Art Project sent Russell a group of materials on the process of silk screening with encouragement to spread the technique in the Southwest. Russell selected Louie Ewing as the person to master the technique and show it to others. Ewing headed the WPA printmaking workshop in Santa Fe. In short order, Ewing had set up a silk screening shop and was producing prints. Silk screening became a major artistic expression in the Southwest. Louie Ewing is viewed by some to be one of the first artists in the United States to "work creatively with serigraphy" on posters and book illustrations. He also did many landscape paintings of New Mexico.

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