Helen Amanda Loggie was a Pacific Northwest artist, best known for her drawings and etchings depicting the local landscape, in particular, the trees and coastline that surrounded her home on Orcas Island, Washington.
Born in New Whatcom (Bellingham), Washington, in 1895 to a prominent lumber-industry family, Helen knew at an early age that she wanted above all else to be an artist. The Loggie family lived one block away from Elizabeth Colborne’s art studio where Helen attended classes as a young girl.
Helen left Bellingham to attend Smith College in Massachusetts in 1914, then continued her studies at the Art Students League of New York from 1916 to 1924. It was at the Art Students League – known for being welcoming to amateur as well as professional artists - that she first took formal classes in drawing and painting. While there, Helen was also introduced to the process of etching, which would become her best-known technique. Following her studies in New York Helen embarked on a period of travel through Italy and France where she immersed herself in Renaissance art and architecture and created numerous sketches and paintings.
Primarily known for her etchings, Helen developed her etching techniques under the tutelage and encouragement of well-established etcher, John Taylor Arms, whom she met in 1929 and continued to collaborate with over the next two decades.
Helen returned to Bellingham in 1927, and several years later built a house on Orcas Island where - when not living at her family home in Bellingham - she lived and created art until her death in 1976.
In 1957 Helen was elected an Academician of the National Academy of Design. She earned the Washington State Arts Commission Governor’s Award for lifetime achievement in art, and exhibited her work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and various other prestigious institutions and galleries.
Loggie received praise and notoriety during her lifetime, but even after becoming recognized nationally as a printmaker, she made sure her etchings remained affordable to the public. Young people, she believed, should be able to afford artwork for their walls.
The Helen Loggie Museum of Art (“The Loggie”), created in 2020, brings together an extensive collection of Loggie’s drawings, etchings, oils and pastels, as well as personal ephemera and memorabilia. The collection was curated over a span of 50 years and incorporates Loggie’s works from the former Lambiel Museum on Orcas Island.
The Loggie Museum is located in Old Town Bellingham at the historic Territorial Courthouse (1858), the oldest masonry building in Washington State. The building recently had a period restoration and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
