The Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation is releasing a WPA-inspired poster of Cedar Tree Neck Sanctuary, a property located off Indian Hill Road in West Tisbury. The poster, designed by West Tisbury painter Rez Williams, was created in the same style as the vintage National Parks posters launched in the 1930s as part of the New Deal’s Works Progress Association (WPA) project, according to a press release.
The Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation (SMF) approached Williams, a former board president of the organization, to depict one of its properties in the new poster. Williams is best known for his large oil paintings of landscapes and commercial fishing vessels, and agreed to head the project after seeing similarities between the original WPA posters and his recent work.
“[The WPA posters are] basically serigraphs, silkscreens, which is a printing method where you use different screens for different colors, and the result is an image that has very flat layers of color,” Williams was quoted as saying in the release. “I was looking at some of the stuff that I’ve been working on lately, and there are a lot of flat areas in the landscape paintings I’ve been doing. So I said, I’ll give it a try.”
Sheriff’s Meadow executive director Adam Moore and board member Sara Tucker originally had the idea for a WPA-inspired poster before the coronavirus took hold in the U.S. They say the unexpected timing of the pandemic, however, can’t be ignored. “I think the poster shows the enduring value of conservation,” Moore is quoted as saying in an SMF press release. “I think it shows that conservation always has value, in good times and in bad.”
The nonprofit has 22 properties on the Island, including Cedar Tree Neck Sanctuary, which has miles of trails that wind down to a north shore beach.
The poster is 14 by 19 inches and, while not available for purchase, can be obtained by becoming a supporter of Sheriff’s Meadow through financial donations. For more information, visit sheriffsmeadow.org.