'Air Mail' actress beautifies Post Office

Arguably the most flamboyant and multitalented of Works Progress Administration (WPA) muralists, Elise Cavanna Seeds Armitage Welton (1905-1963) was described as 6 foot, angular, languid, with purple tinted hair. She first was a dancer, trained by Isadora Duncan, and performed with Ziegfeld Follies. Then Seeds moved on to acting, appearing in dozens of films, including many with cherished friend W.C. Fields. Fields referred to Seeds as, "The most appreciative long piece of string I ever met." In "The Pharmacist" (1933), comedienne Seeds asks for a 2-cent stamp and then rushes out without paying. While searching for a mailbox, she sets off the fire alarm by mistake, creating havoc.

A friend of e.e. Cummings and Ernest Hemingway, among other luminaries, Seeds left the acting life and plied her hand to lithograph, achieving recognition while exhibiting in Los Angeles and New York. Now recognized as a seminal West Coast abstractionist, Seeds was commissioned by WPA to paint the Oceanside, CA mural located at 517 Seagaze Drive. The mural is, decidedly, not abstract. "Air Mail" (1937), depicts a 21-passenger DC-3 airliner passing over Mission San Luis Rey de Francia. The six-acre 1798 mission four miles west of Oceanside is home to California’s first, now ubiquitous, Peruvian Pepper Tree and the grounds for the 1950s Walt Disney Zorro television series.