Grand Ledge: The Artist
James Calder (1907-1977)
Michigan artist James Calder graduated from the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts School in 1930 and remained in the city, where he frequently exhibited in modern art exhibitions. When the Section of Fine Arts began opening competitions later in the decade, Calder was well positioned to enter. In 1938, he submitted a design to the East Detroit post office competition, which generated several Michigan mural commissions, including one that Calder was offered—St. Clair. Ultimately, Calder produced a mural depicting the local Diamond Crystal Salt Company from the river with ships and a tugboat in the foreground. Calder’s aesthetic style carries over from the St. Clair mural to the Grand Ledge mural but even more important was the experience he garnered working on the commission. His familiarity with Section employees and procedures is evident in the Grand Ledge file at the National Archives. Following his positive experience with Grand Ledge, Calder received a third Section commission in Michigan for Rogers City, where he returned to the St. Clair themes of waterfront industry—this time featuring the Michigan Limestone and Chemical Company. Though Calder’s industrial scenes are distinctly his own, it is easy to find similarities with work like Charles Sheeler’s 1930 American Landscape depicting the Ford plant at River Rouge. However, according to Christine M. Nelson Ruby, author of a 1986 dissertation on Section artists in Michigan, there is no evidence that Calder was directly connected to Precisionism. Calder’s facility with industrial and technical subjects served him after the New Deal ended; he went on to do design work for General Motors during WWII and architectural drawings for his brother Ralph Calder after the war. His ongoing commitment to Michigan views continued in his 1956 painting Saint Anne’s from Bridge, now held in the Detroit Institute of Arts collection.
Sources
- “Grand Ledge.” Box 50, Case Files Concerning Embellishments of Public Buildings, 1934-1943, Entry 133, Records of the Public Buildings Service, Record Group 121, National Archives II, College Park, Maryland.
- Christine M. Nelson Ruby, “Art for the People: Art in Michigan Sponsored by the Treasury Section of Fine Arts, 1934-1943,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1986), 256-262.
