Northwest Modernists, Spokane and American Artists | Northwest Modernists | Helmi Juvonen (Northwest Art Collection: Works On Paper)

Northwest Art Collection: Works On Paper

Northwest Modernists, Spokane and American Artists : Northwest Modernists : Helmi Juvonen

Name: Helmi Juvonen

Born: January 17, 1903

Died: 1985

Nationality: American

Affiliations: WPA Artist, Northwest Artist, and Northwest School

Helmi Juvonen was born in Butte, Montana in 1903. When she was 15, her family moved to Seattle. Her Finnish parents encouraged her artistic expression and she was already an accomplished artist by the time she entered Queen Anne High School. She continued to develop her talent at Cornish and appears to have been a highly motivated, talented, and hard-working student. Boxes of notebooks from these early days attest to her passion for drawing. Although Helmi was diagnosed with manic depression in 1930, she was able to make a living with her art. She worked on the WPA Federal Art Project, under Bruce Inverarity, whose father had first sparked her interest in Canadian Indians. During this time, she designed hooked rugs with Indian and floral motifs copied from books. She worked with other W.P.A. employed artists including Fay Chong, Jacob Elshin, Morris Graves, and Hans Bok. She sold prints to clients like Frederick & Nelson and made sketches for the Seattle Times. Later in life she sold prints at Seattle's Pike Place Market. Although many of the prints were loose and whimsical, Helmi could also draw with the precision of a scientific illustrator. She was closely connected to Washington's Native American Culture and was often a guest at important ceremonials, sketching what she saw. Her Indian friends called her "Northern Light." In 1959, at age 56, Helmi was taken to Northern State Hospital in Sedro Woolley for clinical evaluation. The following year she became a ward of the state and was transferred to the Oakhurst Convalescent Center at Elma. During these years exhibitions arranged by her artist friends sparked a re-discovery of her work, and she received considerable recognition.A Frye exhibition in 1976 was followed by shows at the Burke Museum in Seattle, in 1982; at the Nordic Heritage Museum, in Seattle, and at the Evergreen State College Gallery and the State Capitol Museum, in Olympia, all in 1984; a retrospective exhibition at the Whatcom Museum of History and Art, in Bellingham, in 1985; and a major exhibition at the Museum of Northwest Art, in La Conner, in 1991. The Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, Spokane, owns fifty-two works by Helmi Juvonen and a portrait of Helmi taken at Oakhurst Convalescent Center, September 1983, by photographer Mary Randlett, copyright 1983. Sources: Deloris Tarzan Ament, Juvonen, Helmi (1903-1985): The Pearl of the North [electronic document reprinted from Iridescent Light: The Emergence of Northwest Art (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002)] (HistoryLink.org Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, accessed 17 July 2006); available from http://www.historylink.org/ essays/ output.cfm?file_ id=3831; Internet.