Juvonen, Helmi, 1903-1985

Helmi Juvonen was an artist of considerable talent during a time when women artists in the Northwest were not taken seriously and few made art their vocation. She received considerable attention toward the end of her life and can be loosely associated with the artists who have come to be called the Northwest School. Morris Graves, Mark Tobey, and Guy Anderson were her friends and contemporaries. Known to all as simply “Helmi,” she brought a light-hearted joy and humor to a group of artists known more for their somber mysticism. She focused on primitive art at a time when there was very little interest in it. She is described by those who knew her as a person of endless energy and generous nature. She was prolific in her art production and totally without pretense. She could be called eccentric, but also independent, colorful, and whimsical. Although quite gregarious, Helmi also was a loner. It is sometimes difficult to pin down the facts of her life. The following information was gleaned from the sources listed in the bibliography which follows, and from her own papers.

Helmi Dagmar Juvonen was born in Butte, Montana, on January 17, 1903. She was the second daughter of Finnish immigrant parents. Art was a common means of expression in the family. Her father made pencil drawings for his two daughters, and her older sister worked in water colors. Helmi moved to Seattle with her mother and sister in 1918 at age 15. She attended Queen Anne High School and learned dressmaking and millinery in home economics classes. It was already quite apparent at that time that Helmi’s vocation would be art. While still in high school she was selling hand drawn greeting cards and rag dolls through local department stores. She designed the high school yearbook in 1922, the year she graduated.

Helmi was energetic and enterprising. Following her graduation she took on a variety of jobs using the skills she had learned in school, sewing trousseaus for society women and trimming hats for Staadecker & Company, Milliners. In her correspondence with Wesley Wehr, later in life, Helmi reminisces about doing various creative jobs while studying art whenever she could. She drew illustrations for newspaper columnists, murals and displays for department store windows, handmade invitations, place cards, party favors, wedding announcements, and holiday cards for members of society. She attended evening classes at the Seattle Art School, studying illustration with William Horace Smith, drawing and portraiture with Francis Tadema, and nude drawing. She attempted to establish a career as a commercial artist, learning drafting while working for Cascade Fixture Co. Helmi became estranged from her family during this time and moved away from home. Her mother and sister were strongly opposed to her attempts to study art and establish a career as an artist.

Helmi’s well-to-do society friends provided her with scholarships to study at the Cornish Art Institute. Beginning in 1929 she studied illustration with Walter Reese, puppetry with Richard Odlin, and lithography with Emelio Amero. Helmi would later say that “Miss Cornish taught us to be practical if we wanted to be artists.” Under her tutelage, Helmi became determined to make her living as an artist. Mark Tobey was teaching at Cornish at this time. Helmi greatly admired his work but never studied with him.

In 1930, following a severe depression, Helmi was hospitalized and diagnosed with manic-depressive illness (now more often called bipolar disorder). She spent three years at Northern State Hospital at Sedro Woolley before she was released in September 1933. This condition would cause Helmi to be hospitalized several times over the next 30 years and finally institutionalized in 1959. In her early years she apparently was not greatly hindered by her illness.

During the Great Depression, Helmi studied and made a living as she could. She did society portraits, and she continued to sell rag dolls and paintings in department stores, and drawings and small ceramic items such as key chains and ashtrays at downtown gift shops. She also began to exhibit her work and enter contests, in which she sometimes won cash prizes.

While doing drawings of the recently revived Seattle Potlatch festival for the newspaper in 1934, Helmi met Chief Shelton of the Lummi Tribe. The following year she met Chief Colowash (also known as Jobe Charlie) of the Yakima tribe and White Eagle of the Chippewa. This was the beginning of a lifelong interest in native art and culture. She met the leaders of many of the Northwest tribes and was invited by them to attend special ceremonies, some of which seldom were witnessed by outsiders. These friends also included Charlie Swan of the Makah.

In 1937 Helmi bought a tiny cottage on a steep hill overlooking Alki Beach. Nestled in the trees, she loved the feel of being in the midst of primordial nature. The house was reputed to stand atop old Indian burial grounds, a fact which perhaps appealed to her interest in native culture.

In the spring of 1938 Helmi participated in a Federal Art Project sketching Hooverville (the shacks making up a haven for the unemployed). Beginning in 1940, under the auspices of Bruce Inverarity, she and other women artists on the project created hooked rugs for ski lodges in floral and Native American designs. She also helped create dioramas of tribal life for University of Washington anthropology professor Erna Gunther and the University of Washington Museum (later known as the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture). Many of the Northwest’s most well-known artists also found employment with the Federal Art Project. It was during this time that Helmi most likely met fellow artists Morris Graves, Fay Chong, Jacob Elshin, and Julius Twohy. At this time she also met Seattle Art Museum director Richard Fuller, who would become her trusted friend and patron throughout her life.

During the war years 1943-1945 Helmi worked at the Boeing Company doing drawings in isometric perspective. She attended night school to improve her knowledge of mechanical drawing, studying under Hiram Chittenden and Charles E. Douglas. Her battle with mental illness apparently put an end to her pursuit of a career in mechanical drawing. In her correspondence with Richard Fuller, Helmi mentions picking up her last Boeing check after her release from the hospital in 1946.

In February 1946, while traveling by train to South Dakota to sketch at a tribal event, Helmi became confused and agitated. She was hospitalized for a brief time in South Dakota, and upon her return to Seattle she was placed in a psychiatric ward at Harborview Hospital. She regained full control of her legal and financial affairs in December 1946.

Regardless of what else was going on in her life, Helmi devoted much of her time to recording Indian culture and art. When she could, she continued to attend and sketch regional Indian ceremonies. She often spent weeks at a time on the reservations. She recorded the tribal dances of the Lummi-Swinomish on the La Conner Reservation near Bellingham during the winter of 1945. In 1946 she spent a week with the Yakima Indians sketching their ceremonies. In 1947 she stayed for several months on Vancouver Island and was allowed to attend the initiation ceremony of a secret society. She spent a week at Neah Bay in August of 1951, sketching Makah Indian dances, costumes, and artifacts. She attended the ‘Treaty Day’ ceremonial dances at a gathering of many different tribes at La Conner in 1953. When she could not travel out of town she did hundreds of drawings of Native American artifacts in the Washington State Museum.

In the winter of 1950 Helmi met paleontologist and artist Wesley Wehr while he worked as a security guard at the Henry Art Gallery. Wehr became a close friend and trusted advisor in Helmi’s later years. After her death, Wehr acted as executor of her estate. Wesley Wehr describes Helmi during the early 1950s as an outgoing, gregarious person, with a personality as distinctive as her pictures. She sketched anything and anyone that caught her eye, and filled her sketch books with the names and addresses of the people she befriended.

During these years Helmi struggled to earn her living as an artist and to maintain her isolated and dilapidated home. She relied on Richard Fuller of the Seattle Art Museum as confidant and financial patron. He purchased many of her major works for the Seattle Art Museum collections and helped with specific financial needs from time to time. Her letters to Fuller during this time are filled with her plans for selling her art work and her frustration over never having enough money for art supplies and home repairs. Her letters always ask for money, but they also record her detailed research and study of Northwest Indian culture and are filled with philosophical discussions of the nature of art and its relationship to primitive culture. Helmi loved to draw and paint, and was frustrated by the need to spend her time, energy, and resources on ceramics and prints for the tourist trade in order to make a living.

In several letters to Richard Fuller in 1952, Helmi wrote that she had come to believe that her most important responsibility as an artist was to record the native art that would vanish when the current generation of elders died. “One should do that which is of most benefit to mankind – I believe my knowledge of primitives is of most importance…. I believe this is practically the last generation that can obtain this material -- for the younger ones do not believe in it.” But Helmi did not limit herself to just recording native cultures. In one these letters she wrote, “I also occasionally like to run amuk [sic] & do highly imaginary, creative things based on primitives.”

Helmi’s admiration for Mark Tobey grew out of control in the early 1950s. She became obsessed with what she saw as a possible romantic relationship between Tobey and herself. Her letters became intolerable to Tobey when she sent out handmade engagement announcements toward the end of 1951. It was clear that Helmi longed to start a family. Tobey’s image appeared often in her prolific work at this time, as did images of the children she hoped to have with him. Mark Tobey was highly embarrassed by her attention and asked his attorney to look into the problem in October 1955. Helmi’s obsessive behavior apparently was greatly reduced after November 1955.

In January 1952 Helmi was hospitalized again, probably at least partly as a result of her obsession with Mark Tobey. She was discharged at the end of May and gained full legal responsibility for her affairs a year later. During her time away from home, her beloved house at Alki Beach was vandalized and became uninhabitable. Helmi already spent a great deal of time in the University District, sketching at the University of Washington Museum and visiting with her many acquaintances. A close community of artists, many of whom would later be identified with the Northwest School, lived and worked in the University District. This was a natural place for Helmi to find a new home. She found a job at a children’s nursery and attended Bahai meetings regularly with Mark Tobey and his long-time companion, Pehr Hallsten. Helmi apparently was allowed to use Mark Tobey’s studio on occasion, when he was out of town.

In 1956 Helmi moved to a house in Edmonds and attempted to pay her bills by selling her prints in a rented stall at the Seattle Public Market downtown. She made enough to get by from week to week. The house was not much more than a small, dilapidated shack which she shared with a menagerie of cats and chickens. Helmi had no money for maintenance. The condition of her home, the presence of the many animals, and Helmi’s eccentric behavior caused neighbors to complain persistently to the landlord.

Helmi’s mental state was again called into question, and in February 1959 she was removed to the Northern State Hospital (in Sedro Woolley). Helmi was legally declared incompetent. She had no relatives or friends willing or able to take responsibility for her, so she became a ward of the state and was sent to Oakhurst Convalescent Center (Elma, Washington), a home for the mentally impaired. She lived there until her death in 1985. Although she often wrote letters asking people to help her in obtaining a release and constantly complained of the lack of privacy and a secure place to keep her art work, Helmi also seemed happy and productive much of the time. She was allowed to keep cats and have art supplies. She continued to draw and paint. Her fascination with primitive cultures continued to be fueled by constant reading. Her letters speak of her gratitude for reading materials sent to her by friends.

From the mid 1960s Helmi corresponded frequently with friends, acquaintances, and even public personages. Some of her correspondents were famous people, such as Eleanor Roosevelt, President Lyndon Johnson and his daughters, Emperor Halei Selassi, and Pablo Picasso and his children. It may seem improbable, but Helmi actually had met many of the people to whom she wrote, and she often received polite correspondence in return. Helmi kept address books full of names and vague addresses for the people she met or read about. Because she lacked addresses and funds for postage, she sent batches of letters to the Seattle Art Museum, asking her friend Richard Fuller to forward them. In later years the Museum ceased to forward these. They were kept by the museum and came to the University of Washington Libraries along with her other correspondence. Many of the letters contained hand painted cards, paper cutouts, and even embroidery. Some also contained gum, candy, and other treats.

In 1975 Anne Gould Hauberg and Betty Bowen mounted a retrospective exhibit of Helmi’s work under the auspices of the Pacific Northwest Arts Council. The exhibit brought Helmi’s art to the attention of an appreciative art community. It was the first of several retrospective exhibits during the final ten years of Helmi’s life. Many were curated by her devoted friend Wesley Wehr. Friends made sure that Helmi could be present at the openings, which she attended with much enthusiasm until her death. Helmi died at Oakhurst on October 18, 1985. She was 82.