Joseph S. Kozlowski

Who was Joseph S. Kozlowski?

Joseph Stanley Kozlowski, American portrait and watercolor artist, was born in Frankfort, New York. The family later owned a farm in Clinton, New York and Kozlowski attended Clinton High School. He graduated from Syracuse University in 1936 with a BFA degree. In 1938 he was appointed chief artist and photographer with the Poole-Crockett archaeological expedition to study the Mayan ruins in the Yucatán Peninsula undertaken by Syracuse University. He returned to Yucatán in 1940 for a period of 8 months, using his paintings as barter for food and accommodations.

Following the outbreak of the Second World War, Kozlowski joined the Merchant Marine and served as an able-bodied seaman shipping war material from New Orleans, Louisiana and Corpus Christi, Texas through the Panama Canal to Honolulu, Hawaii and, as he was fond of saying, "boat loads of post holes" on the return trip. Between ships he worked as a civilian photographer with the Army Air Corps at both Hickam Field, as it was called during the war, in Hawaii and at the Rome Air Depot in Rome, New York, currently called Griffiss Air Force Base.

From 1946 to 1949 he was a photography and art instructor at the Veterans Administration Hospital and rehabilitation facility in Bath, New York.