His teacher, the noted artist John French Sloan, was a clear influence on Wehr, eschewing realism for the more authentic abstract communication of feeling and subject matter.
[10] Wehr used a variety of media to communicate his values of racial and social justice, beauty in nature, and the complexity of the human condition.
His sculptures in metal painted in simple black and white, such as "Man Woman and Child," articulate the interdependence, yet separateness of the members of the human family at a time when the nuclear family was the ideal of American culture.
It brings to mind the memorable photographs of police dogs and fire hoses assaulting black schoolchildren in the 1960s.
[12] In 2002, librarians Dr. Alan Boehm and Roy Ziegler received a $4,000 research grant from the Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) to "reconstruct the life and accomplishment of a forgotten master of American book artistry and animation," Julian Wehr.