Mining the West: Primary Elements

Arizona’s most notable artist of mines was Lew Davis (1910-1979). Born in Jerome, he knew well the grim realities of a mining community, as his father was employed as a carpenter for a local mine. In 1927, he left Arizona for New York to study art. His strong figurative skills were honed by his studies at the National Academy of Design, and while his style was representational, he stylized and simplified details, which resulted in strong canvases. He returned to Arizona in 1936 during the depths of Great Depression, which had a devastating effect on the state’s mining communities.

When WPA support became available, administrators encouraged artists to return to their home states, and back in Arizona, Davis began to explore mining as a significant theme. His works depicting labor were sympathetic and attuned to the reality of life for the miners. The support he received from the government meant that he did not have to go to work as a mucker, as he recalled: “Two more weeks and I would have been down in the mines.”¹ The work he would have been hired to do was back breaking and exhausting, as the job consisted of loading ore that had been drilled and blasted into cars to be hauled up to the surface.

Morning at the Little Daisy, Jerome (Figure 1) portrays a group of nine miners getting ready to start their day, as evidenced by their clean clothes. The sturdy, weary figures wear heavy, protective shoes and metal helmets with headlamps. Soon, they will head underground in the small cage. When they return to the surface at the end of the day after their eight-hour shift, they will be dirty and exhausted from the hard, dangerous work.

Another canvas by Davis, Little Boy Lives in a Copper Camp, shows a young boy seated, lost in thought as he looks out at a bleak landscape that suggests few amusements for a child. (Figure 2) His slender arms, crossed over his chest for warmth, and his overall emaciation suggest hunger. His skeletal backbone and ribs echo the barren landscape visible from the window. What does the future hold for this child? If the economy is strong, he will likely follow his father into the mines. Otherwise, he will leave and seek employment elsewhere.

 

Mining towns were highly utilitarian communities. Company officials occupied nice houses well away from the less salubrious residences for workers and the substantial buildings in which the company’s business took place. Shacks for the workers were often cobbled up steep hillsides, expendable and subject to the expansion of the mines, which encroached on small, quickly built homes that were easy to abandon. In Copper Camp—Spring by Davis, we can also see how the open-pit mines gradually overtook the towns that had been established adjacent to them. (Figure 3) The rickety buildings were simply rebuilt further away.

¹ Janet Stewart, “Depression Art of Arizona and New Mexico,” Southwest Art, vol. 11, no. 4 (September 1981): 113.