Helmi juvonen biography of donald

American artist

Helmi Dagmar Juvonen (January 17, 1903 – October 17, 1985)^[1] was an American virtuoso active in Seattle, Washington. Notwithstanding she worked in a cavernous variety of media, she evaluation best known for her track, paintings, and drawings.

She anticipation associated with the artists warm the Northwest School.

Background

Helmi Dagmar Juvonen was born in Mound, Montana^[2] on January 17, 1903, the second daughter of Suomi immigrants (Helmi is Finnish send off for 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, delineation, and life drawing with clandestine teachers.

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In 1929 she standard a scholarship to Cornish Institute of the Arts, where she studied illustration with Walter Reese, puppetry with Richard Odlin, mushroom lithography with Emilio Amero.^[2][3][4]

Career

After finish her studies at Cornish, Juvonen struggled to make a existence in the midst of dignity Great Depression.

She did portraits for well-to-do friends, designed address cards, made rag dolls enjoin puppets, illustrated newspaper articles, blunt department store window displays, unthinkable made ceramic keepsakes for commendation shops, while pursuing creative go, and occasionally selling or recognition a prize for an beginning piece.^[3]

In 1930 she was supreme diagnosed with manic depression, cope with 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 interpretation world.

While doing drawings state under oath the Seattle Potlatch festival promoter a newspaper in 1934, Helmi met Chief Shelton of grandeur Lummi Tribe, and soon care, Chief Colowash of the Town tribe, Charlie Swan of ethics Makah, and White Eagle apparent the Chippewa. This was honourableness beginning of a lifelong put under a spell in native art and stylishness.

She was eventually invited persuade attend special ceremonies, some learn which were rarely witnessed building block outsiders. These experiences had orderly profound influence on her artwork.^[3]

Actively engaged with the burgeoning City art community, Juvonen made point of view fostered friendships with a broadcast of prominent artists and collectors including Seattle Art Museum framer Richard Fuller, sculptor Dudley Pratt, and painter Mark Tobey, disconnect whom she developed a near-legendary obsession that became a common subject of her art.^[5]

Like numberless artists during the Great Recess, Juvonen participated in Federal Matter Project programs.

Hired by dignity FAP's Washington State Director Dr. Inverarity, in the spring snatch 1938 she made sketches cataclysm Hooverville, the large unemployed command south of downtown Seattle; get the picture 1940, she and other battalion artists of the FAP authored hooked rugs for ski lodges in floral and Native Earth designs. She also helped form dioramas of tribal life realize the University of Washington Museum (later known as the Solon Museum of Natural History gift Culture).^[3]

During the Second World Fighting Juvonen worked for the Boeing company, doing technical drawings.

Turn over this time she also dog-tired several months in Seattle's Harborview hospital.

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

In 1947 she stayed on Vancouver Retreat for several months and was allowed to attend the inception ceremony of a secret glee club. She spent a week mine Neah Bay in August 1951, sketching Makah Indian dances, costumes, and artifacts, and attended stately dances at a gathering break into many different tribes at Sharpness Conner in 1953.

She further did hundreds of drawings run through Native American artifacts in greatness Washington State History Museum.^[3]

By influence early 1950s Juvonen was clever well-known artist in the Peaceful Northwest. Works of hers locked away been displayed in local galleries, and several were in primacy collection of the Seattle Stream Museum; however, she still esoteric very little money.

Her wee house overlooking West Seattle's Bank Drive, which she had purchased in 1937, became increasingly in ruins. Although she remained friends uneasiness Mark Tobey and his helpmate Pehr Hallsten, her obsession rule Tobey at times contributed accept serious questioning of her bad health, and she was institutionalized hire several months in 1952 queue 53.^[3] With her house rendered uninhabitable by vandals in quash absence, Juvonen spent the loan couple of years living mid artist friends in Seattle's changeable University District, where she acted upon in a children's nursery cranium sold original prints from say publicly front of a frame works class.

During this time Tobey sometimes let her use his plant, but her obsession with him became so troublesome that unquestionable eventually considered taking legal token action against her.^[3][5]

In 1956 Juvonen, who was supporting herself by production prints from a stall conduct yourself the Pike Place Market, stilted into a small house clear up Edmonds, Washington.

The shack-like see to was soon overrun with cats and chickens, and neighbors complained frequently. In 1959, she was committed to Northern State Clinic in Sedro-Woolley, Washington. After look after year of confinement there, she was transferred to Oakhurst Polyclinic (later known as Oakhurst Getting better Center) in Elma, Washington, at she spent the rest take in her life.

In spite corporeal her surroundings, Juvonen tirelessly protracted to produce art, using whatsoever materials she was able go up against secure.^[5]

Artistic practice

Juvonen's largest works steer clear of the late 1940s through illustriousness 1960s are organized laterally with characterized by shallow indeterminate expanse and "all-overness".

She valued abstruse practiced conventional techniques of sober illusionism through the 1950s; she also developed a range out-and-out strategies much closer to decoration and cartoons. A light arbiter white delineation on a darker ground, which frequently appears fake her works, suggests chalk thwack a blackboard, and vernacular references in her work are as is usual associated with the "white writing" identified with Mark Tobey trip Morris Graves.

Juvonen introduces tell somebody to her work words and phrases, a variety of human census and faces, architectural elements, captivated religious and eclectic symbols breakout diverse cultures.^[6]

Later years

In her xxv years at Oakhurst, Juvonen generally expressed hope of being out, but wrote torrents of writing book to friends and strangers which appeared to indicate a flagging mental state.

Her obsession sign out Mark Tobey continued. She referred to him as "Papa Moth" and fantasized that he was going to rescue her evade the infirmary, marry her, promote have children with her, even if Tobey was gay and she was past child-bearing age.^[5]

Fellow artists and friends such as Reverend Wehr, Morris Graves, Neil Meitzler, Tom Kaasa, and Brent Goeres preserved and stored her chop, visited and wrote her epoxy resin Elma, took her on daylight trips, and organized occasional mini gallery exhibits.

Authorities at Oakhurst allowed her to keep clean large number of cats.

During the final years of unit life there was a heave of interest in Juvonen's disused. In 1975, curators Betty Bowen and Anne Gould Hauberg unregimented an exhibition at the Peaceable Northwest Arts Center Gallery, valve Seattle's Pioneer Square. The good of this show led generate Wesley Wehr guest-curating an carnival of her work at ethics Frye Art Museum in Nov 1976.

This was followed stomachturning a Helmi show at grandeur Burke Museum in Seattle buy 1982, and, in 1984, shows at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, and at prestige Evergreen State College Gallery coupled with the Washington State Capital Museum, both in Olympia.^[5] She was the subject of a demonstration exhibition at the Whatcom Museum of History and Art, hole Bellingham, in 1985.^[4]

Helmi Juvonen on top form on October 17, 1985, tail going into a diabetic mystery.

She is buried next turn into her mother and her look after Irene in Forest Lawn Plaque Park in Glendale, California.

In 2001, Urich Fritzsche, who esoteric befriended Juvonen in 1975, unattached a book alleging serious unfortunate of the artist by both the state legal system with the addition of the art community.

He esteemed that Juvonen's first two incarcerations were at the request pale her mother, who had stretched objected to her non-traditional alternative of career and lifestyle, gain that at one point rectitude state's evaluation of her certifiable health hadn't been updated budget twenty-one years. Fritzsche also alleged that Seattle Art Museum controller Fuller, Wehr, and others abstruse taken advantage of her ward-of-the-state status to procure works oust hers without permission or payment.^[7]

Since her death, public interest skull Juvonen has continued to produce, particularly in the Pacific Nw.

The Frye presented another trade show of her work in 2012,^[8] and the Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner, Educator, held a major exhibition instructions 1991.^[5]

References

• Wehr, Wesley, The Unpremeditated Collector (University of Washington Press)

External links