Hawaiian Postman

In 1936, Louis Slobodkin was commissioned to create a sculpture representing mail service in Hawaii, which was then the most remote locale serviced by the U.S. Post Office Department. His sculpture needed to be factually accurate but also visually distinctive from the eleven continental mail carriers with which it would be displayed. This posed a challenge. Almost all mail carriers on the Hawaiian Islands during the 1930s were white men and wore the same uniform as postal employees in New York City. To distinguish his sculpture, Slobodkin dispensed with the standard issue jacket and modeled his figure in rolled shirt sleeves to indicate the tropical climate. The artist also included a pineapple growing at the postman’s feet which was a popular icon of the islands during the 1930s and a nod to Hawaii’s global reputation as a producer of the fruit.

Slobodkin was born on February 19, 1903, in Albany, New York. In 1918, he began a five year course of study at the Beaux Arts Institute of Design in New York City, where he specialized in drawing and modeling. Slobodkin assisted in the studios of several well-known architectural sculptors before winning commissions of his own. His best known work, Abe Lincoln, was created for the 1939 World’s Fair in New York and became a point of controversy due to its size and stylized rendering of a young Lincoln. Later in life, Slobodkin became a successful children’s book illustrator with over 80 publications and a Caldecott Medal awarded in 1944.