Austin Mecklem

Austin Mecklem or “Meck” worked for two years at a gold mine in Juneau, Alaska, to save money for art school. He studied at the San Francisco School of Fine Arts and the Art Students League in New York, and was one of the first artists to settle in the village of Woodstock, New York. He built a cabin and stayed there for many years, painting and teaching summer classes. During the Depression, Mecklem worked for the Federal Art Project, creating canvases and murals that showed industrial landscapes. (Marianne Appel and Austin Mecklem, The Woodstock Artists Association, Exhibition Catalogue, 2000)