Avis Hobbs was a prolific artist who spent all her life in the Pacific Northwest.

She drew for pleasure not profit and treated her friends to her artwork along the way.

She found humor in almost every human endeavor – from baseball to opera, from cooking Brussels sprouts to the watching the Watergate trial.

She graduated valedictorian of her class at Kapowsin High School, which was across the street from her home.

During World War II she attended the University of Washington, where she studied art. But watching people dive into dumpsters for food made her uncomfortable with attending university so she returned to her hometown.

While home, she worked in the bulb fields in the Orting Valley, walking off a job once when she learned the men were paid more than the women for the same work. She was rehired.

In Kapowsin, she met Ernie Arthur, who was coming home from the war. They married and moved to Oregon in the early 1950s.

Her portfolio of art begins in 1952 and a series about the presidential election that year.

She briefly served as a librarian for the city of Bay City. Otherwise, she did not hold jobs, as that was not the norm of the day. So her paper selection for her art was scraps. It included large lumber labels from the Ralph Angel Lumber Company of Portland, Oregon. Ernie would bring home the large labels that she used for a variety of art.

Efforts to become published were
difficult during those years. An editor
of The Oregonian returned her artwork
once, complimenting her for her
“professional and smart” work but
chiding her for the presentation
because she used chalk on those
leftover lumber labels.

Over the years, as her eyesight became worse and she was deemed to be legally blind, she used thick Bic ballpoint pens and thin typewriter paper. The ink bled through the paper. Then the lines became thicker. Some times she experimented with brown and red pens.

Her daughter, Allison Arthur, loved her dearly and called her “Muzz” early on. She liked the name and thought it represented her art as well.

The World Wide Web doesn’t judge a book by the weight of the paper or what’s written on the back of the piece.

And so, during the pandemic, MuzzPostHumorously.com was born with the assistance of Marian Roh, a graphic artist who Allison knew to have a kindred sense of social justice and sense of humor.


                                                         Copyright 2022

                                                         Inquiries for reproduction rights may be sent to
                                                         Allison Arthur,
                                                         P.O. Box 728, Port Townsend, Wa. 98368
                                                         or arthur.allison@yahoo.com,
                                                         or call 360.349.1182.