Little red schoolhouse modeled from schoolday memories of Homer Tate. Safford, Arizona. Mr. Tate is a self-trained artist working in papier mache and such indigenous materials as cactus, bone, wood and stone

Russell grew up in Ottawa, Illinois and went to the Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana. He earned a degree in chemical engineering from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He gave up a position as a chemist to become a painter and used photography as a precursor to his painting, but soon became interested in photography as media. His earliest subjects were Pennsylvanian bootleg mining and the Father Divine cult. In the fall of 1936, during the Great Depression, Lee was hired for the federally sponsored Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographic documentation project of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. He joined a team assembled under Roy Stryker, along with Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein and Walker Evans. Lee created some of the iconic images produced by the FSA, including photographic studies of San Augustine, Texas in 1939, and Pie Town, New Mexico in 1940. Over the spring and summer of 1942, Lee was one of several government photographers to document the eviction of Japanese Americans from the West Coast, producing over 600 images of families waiting to be removed and their later life in various detention facilities.

Despite its French name, papier mâché originated in China, where paper was invented. The first objects made of papier mâché were found during excavations in China: ancient Chinese armour and helmets. To make them rigid, they were covered with several layers of varnish. They date back to the Han Dynasty (202 BC - 220 AD). At the time, papier-mâché armour was the most technologically advanced form of protection, able to withstand an arrow and a single stroke of a sword. In addition to its durability, paper armour was very light, allowing the fighter to move quickly in battle.