Five Women Artists in the Collection: Helen A. Loggie

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Helen A Loggie; Hemlock Forest, ca. 1955; Etching. Whatcom Museum no. 1976.8.1

The Whatcom Museum is featuring five women artists from its collection throughout the month of March—Women’s History Month—in conjunction with the #5WomenArtists campaign. The campaign is organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts. This week we’re highlighting Helen A Loggie, whose work was last exhibited in the Whatcom Museum’s 2016 show, Just Women, as well as in the 2010 exhibition Show of Hands: Northwest Women Artists, 1880-2010.

Helen A Loggie early years

Helen A Loggie (1895–1976) was best known for her etchings depicting the Pacific Northwest landscape of the early- to mid-twentieth century, and particularly the trees that occupied her surroundings.

Loggie’s family settled in Bellingham the year she was born to operate a lumber mill at the mouth of Whatcom Creek. Surrounded by the lumber industry and forests, trees became central to Loggie in her later work. But her initial interests in art centered on portraiture.

Portrait of Helen A Loggie, 1913. Whatcom Museum no. 1995.0010.000013.

In 1916 she moved to New York City to study at the Art Students League where she took her first formal courses in drawing and painting. It was there she learned the etching process that would later become the basis of her life’s work.

Travels and interest in Renaissance art took her to Europe numerous times during the 1920s where she sketched bustling city scenes. But the Pacific Northwest called her home. She settled in Bellingham in 1927 and found “a clarity of vision” within the landscape and culture of her childhood.

Life in Bellingham

Her practice was to draw outdoors during the spring and summer on Orcas Island or in the mountains. Using her drawings as her source imagery, she worked on her etchings during the fall and winter in her studio in Bellingham, though it was not uncommon for her to draw in nature even in the coldest months.

Many of her images are of specific places and even specific trees, which she infused with anthropomorphic qualities. For instance, a gnarled and twisted juniper tree she often depicted, which was located on a small island off the coast of her Orcas Island home, was called King Goblin. A version of Goblin resides in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Hemlock Forest was one of the last etchings that Loggie completed before her death. It took her three to five years to complete. The dense, overall composition and areas of scribbled, calligraphic marks and vertical texture make it one of the more abstract works and conveys a certain spiritual quality. As in this and many other works, Loggie’s trees are both intimate portraits and elaborate cathedrals of the natural world.

-Compiled and written by Amy Chaloupka, Curator of Art

Five Women Artists in the Collection: Gail Tremblay

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Gail Tremblay (b. 1945); An Iroquois Dreams That the Tribes of the Middle East Will Take the Message of Deganawida to Heart and Make Peace, 2009; 16mm film, leader, rayon cord, and thread.

The Whatcom Museum is featuring five women artists from its collection throughout the month of March—Women’s History Month—in conjunction with the #5WomenArtists campaign, organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts. This week we highlight Gail Tremblay, whose work was last exhibited in the Whatcom Museum’s 2016 show, Just Women as well as in the 2010 exhibition Show of Hands: Northwest Women Artists, 1880-2010.

Gail Tremblay

Born in Buffalo, New York in 1945, Gail Tremblay is an artist, writer, and activist of Onondaga and Mi’kmaq ancestry. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Oregon and has taught English, Native American Studies, Art, and Art History at Evergreen State College for more than 35 years. Tremblay continues to write poetry, curate, and create contemporary artworks in the Pacific Northwest and resides in Olympia, Washington.

Gail Tremblay. Photo from Froelick Gallery.

Since the 1980s, Tremblay has been weaving baskets made from scraps of 35mm and 16mm film. She culls the film from a variety of sources, including old movie trailers and outdated educational documentaries. To add variations of pattern and color, Tremblay incorporates leader film, which is often of a white, black, blue, green, or vibrant red tone. The titles of her works reference the original film sources.

Of this series the artist writes, “I enjoyed the notion of recycling film and gaining control over a medium that had historically been used by both Hollywood and documentary filmmakers to stereotype American Indians. I relished the irony of making film take on the traditional fancy stitch patterns of our ash and sweetgrass baskets.”

Employing the skills and visual language of her ancestry, Tremblay retains tradition through process while proposing a contemporary critique through her media which often reflects issues of appropriation and misrepresentation.

Tremblay’s poetry speaks to modern indigenous experiences of isolation and loss when lands and identities are overwritten. For example, in her poem Meditation on the Dalles Dam, she reflects on the disappearance of the history, peoples, and ecology of Celilo Falls. A once-bustling fishing and cultural hub, and the oldest indigenous settlement in North America, Celilo Falls and village were flooded to make way for a hydroelectric dam.

Meditation on The Dalles Dam

for Lillian Pitt

Electricity is humming in a spider web of lines
as copper wires cased in rubber cross the land;
what sorrow builds in this sound that only whines

Where the thunder of water no longer combines
with a wild rush of salmon so close at hand?
Electricity is humming in a spider web of lines.

Where fish runs were rich, everything declines.
No one explains how a body can withstand
The sorrow that builds in this sound that only whines.

Fishermen stood on scaffolds amid the steep inclines
of rock; water foamed before the flow was dammed
so electricity could hum in a spider web of lines.

Rocks watched while men made strange designs
To swell the river to places no rush of water planned.
What sorrow grows when the new sound only whines?

The bodies of old ones wash out of ancient shrines—
how can the spirits of the dead learn to understand
the electricity that hums in a spider web of lines.
What sorrow builds in this sound that only whines?

 

-Compiled and written by Amy Chaloupka, Curator of Art

Five Women Artists in the Collection: Tabitha Kinsey

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Foot logs provided by nature across fir bordered trout brook, 1926. Photo by Darius Kinsey, hand-tinted by Tabitha Kinsey, Whatcom Museum #1981.53.10.

The Whatcom Museum is featuring five women artists from its collection throughout the month of March—Women’s History Month—in conjunction with the #5WomenArtists campaign. The campaign is organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts. This week we highlight Tabitha Kinsey, whose original hand-tinted work is currently on display in the Old City Hall exhibit Kinseys in Color.

Tabitha Kinsey

Tabitha May Pritts was born in Waverly Mills, Minnesota, on May 24, 1875, the daughter of Samuel and Elizabeth (Berg) Pritts. She and her five siblings came west with their parents, who homesteaded in Whatcom County, Washington.

In 1896, Tabitha married Darius Kinsey, a commercial photographer. He taught her the techniques of developing negatives and making prints. While his exceptional camera work has a deserved legacy, Tabitha’s role was just as vital to their 45-year business. They were a husband and wife photographic team.

While Darius took the photos, it was Tabitha who processed the black & white negatives, created the prints, including burning and dodging, and made the critical aesthetic decisions on final quality. The clarity and detail of the photographs came from making contact prints off large negatives, including glass plates up to 20 x 24 inches.

Studio portrait of Tabitha Kinsey by Darius Kinsey, c. 1896 / Photo by Darius Kinsey, Whatcom Museum no. 1978.84.3763

Page from Kinsey sales catalog. Collection of the Whatcom Museum.

The distinctive caption and Kinsey name on the bottom of 11 x 14 prints is Tabitha’s handwriting. Written in black ink on the front of nitrate negatives, it would appear as white script on each subsequent print.

Her custom-tinted photos

Tabitha introduced the option of custom-tinted pictures. In this process, a black & white, fiber-based photo is meticulously painted with “the best quality of water colors” to create a color photograph. This extra work doubled the print’s retail value. Each hand-tinted photograph is a unique work of art.

The luminous effect of tinting tends to be more idealized than realistic. Some describe them as dramatic, others say romantic. While Darius preferred darkened tones, Tabitha sought to brighten the mood of photos.

You can read more about Tabitha and Darius Kinsey and view a selection of Kinsey photographs in this online virtual gallery.

-Written by Jeff Jewell, Photo Archives Historian

Five Women Artists in the Collection: Helmi Dagmar Juvonen

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Helmi Dagmar Juvonen; Untitled (Eskimo Adam & Eve), Tempera; 13″ x 10″. Gift of Ron Kellen.

Helmi Dagmar Juvonen, Vantage, circa 1975-1976; Gouache on rice paper. Gift of Dr. Ulrich & Stella Fritzsche.

The Whatcom Museum is featuring five women artists from its collection throughout the month of March—Women’s History Month—in conjunction with the #5WomenArtists campaign. The campaign is organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts. This week we highlight Helmi Dagmar Juvonen, whose work was last exhibited in the Lightcatcher in 2015.

Helmi Dagmar Juvonen

Helmi Dagmar Juvonen (1903-1985), was a Seattle-based artist who found success capturing the culture of Native American tribes across the Pacific Northwest. She was a persistent artist who strove to create art in a time where being a female artist was tough. Even as she struggled with poverty and mental illness, she continued to create art until her final days.

Drawn to Northwest Coast native culture, she developed a rapport with the Lummi, Swinomish, Makah, and Yakama chiefs, who invited her to participate in their ceremonies. Aboriginal art and ritual nurtured her creative spirit, empowering her to transcend gender bias, poverty, and decades confined to an asylum for mental illness.

Mary Randlett, Photograph of artist Helmi Dagmar Juvonen, 1983. Whatcom Museum #1986.0017.000001.

With an avid interest in anthropology, she believed in the importance of documenting Native American spiritual life. As a result, she forged a unique style, merging Northwest aboriginal culture with modern art. The artist also conjured “imaginary things.” Many of her works reflect the dark and light sides of the human psyche.

In many ways, Helmi was ahead of her time. Her graffiti-like abstraction, mixed-media compositions, and paper cutouts relate to trends in contemporary art.

The Museum’s collection of her work numbers 250 objects. It includes some of her finest pieces, such as paintings of petroglyphs from Central Washington and watercolors of Lummi masked dancers. You can view a selection of her work in this online virtual gallery and read more about her life on the Museum’s blog.

Compiled from curatorial narrative and research by Barbara Matilsky.

Wire, metal foil work by Lesley Dill

Five Women Artists in the Collection: Lesley Dill

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The Whatcom Museum is featuring five women artists from its collection throughout the month of March—Women’s History Month—in conjunction with the #5WomenArtists campaign, organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The Museum highlights women artists whose artwork spans a variety of media, genres, and eras. We hope you will share our #5WomenArtists on social media, and celebrate the important contributions these women have made to the arts.

Lesley Dill

Lesley Dill; Shimmer, 2005 – 2006; Wire, metal foil, 12 ft. x 60 ft. x 15 ft. Whatcom Museum # 2015.17.1

The work of contemporary American artist Lesley Dill combines imagery and language, fine art and poetry, and allegory and metaphor.

Born and raised in Maine, Dill received her Master of Arts from Smith College in 1974, and her Master of Fine Arts from Maryland Institute College of Art in 1980.

In pursuit of a career in painting, the artist moved to New York after graduation. Her eyes were opened to new modes of expression and she soon emerged prominently as a sculptor and multi-media artist.

Her interest in language and allusions to strong feminine identity reflect her friendship with the late artist Nancy Spero (1926 – 2009). Spero used text and depictions of the female form, often appropriated as classical goddesses, in her scroll paintings.

Dill’s work

In her piece Shimmer (2005 – 2006),  Lesley Dill uses metal and wire to create an allegorical sculpture that resembles human hair and incorporates imagery and poetry. The piece emerges from a body of work that explores the motif of waterfalls using materials such as wire thread, gauze, cut metal figures, and words that stretch across and down a wall.

Composed of more than two million feet of fine wire, Shimmer was originally inspired by the reflection of light on the Atlantic Ocean. Forming an immense, silvery curtain, a 60-foot cascade descends from a fragment of a mystical poem by the Catalan poet Salvador Espriu (1913 – 1985):

“You may laugh, but I feel

within me, suddenly, strange

voices of God and handles,

dog’s thirst and message of

slow memories that disappear across a fragile

bridge.”

Artist Lesley Dill.

Nature and the divine mingle in the artist’s work, as does the link of the human form to nature. Dill fashions tiny foil figures that cavort among words of poetry spread across the wiry “falls” that stretch downward. Dill notes, “In its silver, Rapunzel-like way, Shimmer, the sixth and last in a series, emerged from decades of making white thread water fall pieces…it captures light, not gravity-bound, implies energy, and feminine virility-like hair.”

Shimmer was exhibited at the Museum in Lesley Dill’s Poetic Vision: From Shimmer to Sister Gertrude Morgan. The show ran Oct. 23, 2011 – March 4, 2012 and was curated by Barbara Matilsky. Learn more about this exhibition and read the Lesley Dill Exhibition Catalog.

Dill’s artworks are in the collections of more than 50 museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.