Preview up to 100 items from this collection below. Prints, drawings and paintings by artists Mark Tobey, Kenneth Callahan, Helmi Juvonen, Robert Cranston Lee and others celebrate the Northwest. Many pieces hail from the 1934 Public Works of Art Project.
Symbolic stylistic form
Helmi Juvonen was born in Butte, Montana on January 17, 1903. She worked in many media including printmaking, painting and paper-craft. She attended Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle where she met artist Mark Tobey with whom she was famously obsessed. Although she was diagnosed as a manic-depressive in 1930, she gained wide appreciation in the Northwest for her linocut prints depicting Northwest Indian people and tribal ceremonies. She worked with a number of artists on the Public Works of Art Project including Fay Chong and Morris Graves. Over the years, her mental health deteriorated and in 1960 she was declared a ward of the state and was committed to Oakhurst Convalescent Center. She was much beloved and had many friends and benefactors (including Wes Wehr) and was able to have exhibitions despite the confinement. She died in 1985.
Identifier: spl_art_J989Sy2
Date: n.d.
View this itemPencil sketches of CCC camps: road construction - the shovel gang; Orcas Island, Wash.
Identifier: spl_art_N779Pe07
Date: 1934
View this itemPencil sketches of CCC camps: building trail - mountain lake; Orcas Island, Wash.
Identifier: spl_art_N779Pe06
Date: 1934
View this itemLate summer
Paul Horiuchi was born in Kawaguchi, Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan in 1906. He was a collagist, painter, and muralist. He participated in the Works Progress Administration program in Wyoming with Vincent Campanella in 1923. He exhibited in the Northwest Annual at the Seattle Art Museum in 1930. He moved to Seattle in 1946 where he and his family ran an antique shop called Tozai. He was introduced to Mark Tobey and the Northwest School of artists around this time. In 1956, he began to work in collage in addition to paint for which he became quite famous. He died in 1999.
Identifier: spl_art_H782La
Date: 1958
View this item[Wood pile]
Fay Chong was born in Canton, China in 1912. He worked primarily in printmaking and in watercolor. He and his family moved to Seattle in 1920. He attended Edison High School where he was a classmate of George Tsutakawa. Chong worked on the Public Works of Art Project in the 1930's with Robert Bruce Inverarity, Jacob Elshin and Julius Twohy. Chong taught art at Cornish College for the Arts, Seattle Community College, Washington Senior High School and Ingraham High School. He received a Bachelor's degree from the University of Washington in 1968 and an MAT from the University of Washington in 1971. He died suddenly of a stroke in 1973.
Identifier: spl_art_C455Wo
Date: 1949
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