Michigan Post Office Murals Project

Alma: The Artist

Joe H. Cox (1915-1997)

When Joe Cox entered the East Detroit Post Office mural competition in 1938, he was a young man in his early twenties still living in Indianapolis, Indiana, his hometown. Before participating in New Deal programs, Cox studied at the John Herron Art School in Indianapolis (now part of Indiana University). In the summer of 1939, after accepting the Alma, Michigan, mural commission and completing a mural for Garrett, Indiana, the previous year, Cox moved to Iowa City to teach, with plans to apply to the University of Iowa’s MFA program. He wrote to Edward Rowan at the Section of Fine Arts, describing his new life and schedule: “..teaching only ten hours a week, my stipend is limited. My teaching amounts to about three hours, three mornings a week and two courses, two hours, two mornings a week. Leaving my afternoons, Saturdays and Sundays free to paint. I am very happy about that, also the wonderful rolling countryside here is delightful and inspiring. I feel too that teaching beginning painting will help me.”

It seems that Cox’s change of scenery did help his work on the Alma mural because the new designs that he submitted after moving were quickly approved by the Section in Washington, after his unsuccessful sketches back in Indianapolis. In fact, he installed the completed mural in Alma over the university’s Spring Break in March 1940. Like many young muralists, Joe Cox served in the United States military (the Air Force) during World War II but he returned to art after the War. In 1954, Cox began teaching at North Carolina State University School of Design, where he went on to spend most of his career. Today, his archive is held at the university’s library. Cox continued to work as a painter and his work is in museum collections across the South. He later completed additional murals in a more modernist style but his most unexpected work is the 1972 Color Wall, a multicolor light sculpture on the North Carolina State University campus.