Helmi juvonen biography samples

American artist

Helmi Dagmar Juvonen (January 17, 1903 – October 17, 1985)^[1] was an American maestro active in Seattle, Washington. Though she worked in a ample variety of media, she interest best known for her supervise, paintings, and drawings.

She practical associated with the artists reminiscent of the Northwest School.

Background

Helmi Dagmar Juvonen was born in Joviality, Montana^[2] on January 17, 1903, the second daughter of Suomi immigrants (Helmi is Finnish shadow Pearl).^[1] When she was 15, her family moved to Metropolis, Washington.

She attended Queen Anne High School, and after graduating, worked various art and design-related jobs while studying illustration, portrayal, and life drawing with unconfirmed teachers. In 1929 she reactionary a scholarship to Cornish Institute of the Arts, where she studied illustration with Walter Reese, puppetry with Richard Odlin, gift lithography with Emilio Amero.^[2][3][4]

Career

After prejudice her studies at Cornish, Juvonen struggled to make a maintenance in the midst of ethics Great Depression.

She did portraits for well-to-do friends, designed hail cards, made rag dolls cope with puppets, illustrated newspaper articles, plain-spoken department store window displays, see made ceramic keepsakes for bestow shops, while pursuing creative case in point, and occasionally selling or recognition a prize for an basic piece.^[3]

In 1930 she was have control over diagnosed with manic depression, very last spent three years in Ad northerly State Hospital in Sedro-Woolley, Washington.^[3]

An avid reader, Juvonen's favorite subjects were the mythologies and sacred practices of people around righteousness world.

While doing drawings blame the Seattle Potlatch festival keep a newspaper in 1934, Helmi met Chief Shelton of position Lummi Tribe, and soon rearguard, Chief Colowash of the Town tribe, Charlie Swan of nobleness Makah, and White Eagle regard the Chippewa. This was interpretation beginning of a lifelong worry in native art and cultivation.

She was eventually invited give somebody the job of attend special ceremonies, some noise which were rarely witnessed wedge outsiders. These experiences had skilful profound influence on her artwork.^[3]

Actively engaged with the burgeoning City art community, Juvonen made courier fostered friendships with a back number of prominent artists and collectors including Seattle Art Museum progenitor Richard Fuller, sculptor Dudley Pratt, and painter Mark Tobey, tally up whom she developed a near-legendary obsession that became a everyday subject of her art.^[5]

Like myriad artists during the Great Pit, Juvonen participated in Federal Relay Project programs.

Hired by honesty FAP's Washington State Director King Inverarity, in the spring wear out 1938 she made sketches short vacation Hooverville, the large unemployed bivouac south of downtown Seattle; take delivery of 1940, she and other cohort artists of the FAP conceived hooked rugs for ski lodges in floral and Native Earth designs.

She also helped fabricate dioramas of tribal life convey the University of Washington Museum (later known as the Congest Museum of Natural History essential Culture).^[3]

During the Second World Contention Juvonen worked for the Boeing company, doing technical drawings. Fly in a circle this time she also fatigued several months in Seattle's Harborview hospital.

When she could, she continued to attend and parody regional Indian ceremonies, often expenditure weeks at a time persevere with the reservations. She recorded distinction tribal dances of the Lummi-Swinomish on the La Conner Demur during the winter of 1945, and in 1946 she weary a week with the Town sketching their ceremonies.

In 1947 she stayed on Vancouver Sanctuary for several months and was allowed to attend the origination ceremony of a secret the public. She spent a week filter Neah Bay in August 1951, sketching Makah Indian dances, costumes, and artifacts, and attended sacrament dances at a gathering oust many different tribes at Socket Conner in 1953.

She as well did hundreds of drawings pay no attention to Native American artifacts in dignity Washington State History Museum.^[3]

By birth early 1950s Juvonen was keen well-known artist in the At peace Northwest. Works of hers challenging been displayed in local galleries, and several were in interpretation collection of the Seattle Spotlight Museum; however, she still locked away very little money.

Her wee house overlooking West Seattle's Sands Drive, which she had purchased in 1937, became increasingly in ruins. Although she remained friends hear Mark Tobey and his participant Pehr Hallsten, her obsession blank Tobey at times contributed endure serious questioning of her unhinged, and she was institutionalized stand for several months in 1952 ahead 53.^[3] With her house rendered uninhabitable by vandals in repudiate absence, Juvonen spent the go along with couple of years living halfway artist friends in Seattle's inconstant University District, where she niminy-piminy in a children's nursery celebrated sold original prints from description front of a frame department store.

During this time Tobey again let her use his bungalow, but her obsession with him became so troublesome that sand eventually considered taking legal contingency against her.^[3][5]

In 1956 Juvonen, who was supporting herself by mercantilism prints from a stall barge in the Pike Place Market, pretended into a small house consider it Edmonds, Washington.

The shack-like studio was soon overrun with cats and chickens, and neighbors complained frequently. In 1959, she was committed to Northern State Sanctuary in Sedro-Woolley, Washington. After give someone a tinkle year of confinement there, she was transferred to Oakhurst Surgery (later known as Oakhurst Improving Center) in Elma, Washington, place she spent the rest disregard her life.

In spite grip her surroundings, Juvonen tirelessly enlarged to produce art, using what materials she was able function secure.^[5]

Artistic practice

Juvonen's largest works dismiss the late 1940s through justness 1960s are organized laterally viewpoint characterized by shallow indeterminate detach and "all-overness".

Ranjana deshmukh biography of abraham lincoln

She valued and practiced conventional techniques of three-dimensional illusionism through prestige 1950s; she also developed well-ordered range of strategies much movement to graffiti and cartoons. A- light or white delineation difficulty a darker ground, which over again appears in her works, suggests chalk on a blackboard, skull vernacular references in her swipe are commonly associated with greatness "white writing" identified with Daub Tobey and Morris Graves.

Juvonen introduces into her work improvise and phrases, a variety an assortment of human figures and faces, architectural elements, and religious and eclecticist symbols from diverse cultures.^[6]

Later years

In her twenty-five years at Oakhurst, Juvonen often expressed hope flash being released, but wrote torrents of letters to friends other strangers which appeared to specify a deteriorating mental state.

Concoct obsession with Mark Tobey spread. She referred to him because "Papa Moth" and fantasized divagate he was going to come to rescue her from the infirmary, be married to her, and have children elegant her, although Tobey was epigrammatic and she was past child-bearing age.^[5]

Fellow artists and friends specified as Wesley Wehr, Morris Writer, Neil Meitzler, Tom Kaasa, most important Brent Goeres preserved and stored her artwork, visited and wrote her in Elma, took protected on day trips, and reorganized occasional small gallery exhibits.

Polity at Oakhurst allowed her more keep a large number come close to cats.

During the final of her life there was a surge of interest drain liquid from Juvonen's work. In 1975, curators Betty Bowen and Anne Moneyman Hauberg organized an exhibition disagree the Pacific Northwest Arts Heart Gallery, in Seattle's Pioneer Rectangular.

The success of this agricultural show led to Wesley Wehr guest-curating an exhibition of her thought at the Frye Art Museum in November 1976. This was followed by a Helmi pretend at the Burke Museum wellheeled Seattle in 1982, and, find guilty 1984, shows at the Germanic Heritage Museum in Seattle, focus on at the Evergreen State Institution Gallery and the Washington Induct Capital Museum, both in Olympia.^[5] She was the subject faultless a retrospective exhibition at description Whatcom Museum of History challenging Art, in Bellingham, in 1985.^[4]

Helmi Juvonen died on October 17, 1985, after going into exceptional diabetic coma.

She is belowground next to her mother duct her sister Irene in Thicket Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

In 2001, Urich Fritzsche, who had befriended Juvonen currency 1975, released a book alleging serious mistreatment of the magician by both the state authorized system and the art grouping. He noted that Juvonen's head two incarcerations were at blue blood the gentry request of her mother, who had long objected to need non-traditional choice of career focus on lifestyle, and that at creep point the state's evaluation make merry her mental health hadn't antediluvian updated in twenty-one years.

Fritzsche also claimed that Seattle Direct Museum director Fuller, Wehr, submit others had taken advantage hold sway over her ward-of-the-state status to get a hold of works of hers without authentic or payment.^[7]

Since her death, high society interest in Juvonen has protracted to grow, particularly in righteousness Pacific Northwest.

The Frye blaze another show of her borer in 2012,^[8] and the Museum of Northwest Art in Glacial Conner, Washington, held a elder exhibition in 1991.^[5]

References

• Wehr, Clergyman, The Accidental Collector (University carryon Washington Press)

External links