Helmi Juvonen

Mark Tobey's Eskimo Mask, by Helmi Juvonen, linocut with added color, 1954.

Helmi Dagmar Juvonen (January 17, 1903 – October 17, 1985) was an American artist active in Seattle, Washington. Although she worked in a wide variety of media, she is best known for her prints, paintings, and drawings. She is associated with the artists of the Northwest School.

Early life Helmi Dagmar Juvonen was born in Butte, Montana on January 17, 1903, the second daughter of Finnish immigrants (Helmi is Finnish for Pearl).

Career After finishing her studies at Cornish, Juvonen struggled to make a living in the midst of the Great Depression. She did portraits for well-to-do friends, designed greeting cards, made rag dolls and puppets, illustrated newspaper articles, did department store window displays, and made ceramic keepsakes for gift shops, while pursuing creative art, and occasionally selling or receiving a prize for an original piece. With her house rendered uninhabitable by vandals in her absence, Juvonen spent the next couple of years living among artist friends in Seattle's bustling University District, where she worked in a children's nursery and sold original prints from the front of a frame shop. During this time Tobey occasionally let her use his studio, but her obsession with him became so troublesome that he eventually considered taking legal action against her. Later years

In her twenty-five years at Oakhurst, Juvonen often expressed hope of being released, but wrote torrents of letters to friends and strangers which appeared to indicate a deteriorating mental state. Her obsession with Mark Tobey continued. She referred to him as "Papa Moth" and fantasized that he was going to rescue her from the infirmary, marry her, and have children with her, although Tobey was gay and she was past child-bearing age. She was the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Whatcom Museum of History and Art, in Bellingham, in 1985.

Since her death, public interest in Juvonen has continued to grow, particularly in the Pacific Northwest. The Frye presented another show of her work in 2012, and the Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner, Washington, held a major exhibition in 1991.