Serving the High Plains

Man with Logan ties designed postage stamps

The next time you buy stamps from the post office, they might have been designed by a man with extensive ties to Logan.

Ryan Feerer, a professor of graphic design at Abilene Christian University in Texas, created the original art that led to four stamps being created for the U.S. Postal Service. The stamps feature western wear: a belt buckle, a cowboy hat, a pearl-snap shirt and cowboy boots.

The stamps can be purchased at post offices or online at store.usps.com. They are so-called "forever" stamps, which means they still can be used for first-class letter postage even after rates increase.

Feerer is the son of Keith Feerer, a Logan native who returned last fall to be the pastor of the Logan Church of Christ, and the grandson of Jack Feerer, a former longtime postmaster in Logan.

Keith Feerer pastored at other churches in New Mexico, Texas, California and Florida before returning to his hometown. His wife, Joyce, is a nurse practitioner and began working at Logan Family Practice last week.

Ryan Feerer as a child honed his artistic talents in church pews as his father worked on his weekly sermons.

"I needed to keep myself entertained, so I would just draw," he told the Pampa (Texas) News.

Feerer said a former art professor recommended him for the postal-service project three years ago. The USPS gave him freedom to design what he wished, he told KACU, a public radio station in Abilene.

"I started bringing in snakes, and spurs and the sun, cacti to help frame those primary illustrations on each stamp. So if you look really closely you'll probably see a few Easter eggs in there," he said.

The postal service has printed 175 million of the stamps.

"My grandfather, he was a postmaster for about 23 years in a small town in New Mexico called Logan," Feerer said. "And that was really special for me to be able to work on something that had some loose ties to my family history, so I wanted them to be perfect."

 
 
Rendered 03/23/2024 05:07