I grew up in Carthage, IL, where even in childhood visits to the Post Office were made more meaningful by a moving mural by Karl Kelp: “Pioneers – Tilling the Soil and Building Log Cabin.”

The 1938 art – showing ten everyday men, women and a kid farming, notching and lifting logs, bringing food, resting and standing guard – was typical of an ambitious and successful project that had the federal government putting artists to work: the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

Oh, that Congress could extract its head from its tail and see that such efforts could still not only provide income to jobless artists, but inspire others who see the results.

In Peoria, evidence of the art and message and power of WPA work is on the southwest wall of the federal courthouse on Main and Monroe Streets, where the exterior limestone sculptures were created in the winter of 1939 by Freeman Schoolcraft.

William Zimmer in the New York Times 60 years later commented, “The purpose was to uplift the country in the middle of the Depression. Therefore brave role models from history, as well as ordinary folk doing ordinary work, were prime subject matter.”

The WPA was the Works Progress Administration, created on May 6, 1935, to help provide economic relief to the citizens of the United States who were suffering through the Depression.

During the life of the WPA, the government-funded Federal Art Project of the WPA hired hundreds of artists who collectively created more than 200,000 works of art for the American people. Part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, the project employed some of the 20th century’s greatest artists, including Thomas Hart Benton, Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock.

Under the direction of curator and critic Holger Cahill, the Federal Art Project operated in all 48 states and had divisions for easel painting, murals, sculpture, posters, prints and drawings, plus almost 100 community art centers with art classes for children and developing artists.

“Together these programs created a new awareness of and appreciation for the visual arts in America, and contributed heavily to the development of many artists who would go on to define the Abstract Expressionist era following the end of World War II,” said Justin Wolf, writing for “The Art Story.”

Roosevelt had previously tried to provide employment for artists on relief (now called welfare), namely the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), which operated from 1933 to 1934, and the Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture, created in 1934 after PWAP folded. However, it was the FAP that provided the widest reach, creating more than 5,000 jobs for artists.

“For artists to be considered for the Federal Art Project, they first had to apply for Home Relief to confirm they were impoverished, and then submit samples of their work to demonstrate they were actively creating art,” Wolf said. “Once approved, an artist’s stipend was $24 [for each 30-hour week].”

On June 30, 1943, the Federal Art Project disbanded.

There were “a few public-spirited artists who had come out of the WPA schools [and] had worked with the Associated American Artists, of which I was a member,” recalled Aaron Bohrod (who’d done murals in Galesburg, Centralia and Vandalia), “– Grant Wood, John Steuart Curry and Thomas Hart Benton.”

Years later, then-world-famous Willlem de Kooning said, “The Project was terribly important. It gave us enough to live on and we could paint what we wanted. I had to resign after a year because I was an alien, but even in that short time, I changed my attitude toward being an artist. Instead of doing odd jobs and painting on the side, I painted and did odd jobs on the side. My life was the same, but I had a different view of it. I gave up the idea of first making a fortune and then painting in my old age.”

The government-backed artists painted landscapes and cityscapes, historical moments or places and scenes representative of American ideals. Such programs created a new awareness of and appreciation for the visual arts in America, and contributed heavily to the development of many artists who would go on to define the Abstract Expressionist era following the end of World War II.

And they lifted Americans’ spirits.

In downtown Peoria, the art deco creations represent, right to left (looking from the street), are “Man of Peoria Industry,” “Woman of Peoria Agriculture,” “Potawatomi Native American” and “Peoria Postal Worker,” together showing a worker with a huge wrench, a farm woman, a Native American and a postal employee (the building formerly housed Peoria’s Main Post Office, too).

Schoolcraft – whose talent was discovered when he was still a Jackson, Mich., high schooler when Elmwood, IL, native and accomplished artist Lorado Taft was there working on a monument – studied with Taft in Chicago before getting help from the WPA.

The four pieces of façade all seem to be ideal – idyllic, even – examples of determination and strength. They seem to almost ripple with power and hope.

It was “as if the message is that Americans have the innate strength to overcome hardship,” Zimmer wrote. “[They] are usually composites of many, sometimes oddly juxtaposed vignettes, which convey the notion that unity can come from diversity.”

Artist still need work; Americans still need inspiration.

Can’t Congress see value in such labor, even if it’s, arguably, patriotic propaganda?

Despite today’s lingering Great Recession, our diversity can once more yield unity – if we’re aroused by art.