Leo Lambiel turned his entire Orcas Island home into a museum celebrating island art. There are even commissioned works on his closet doors. He devotes an entire gallery to Helen Loggie, onetime Eastsound resident and the San Juan’s most famous artist. He owns 178 of her etchings, drawings, and art tools, giving tours by appointment. Images courtesy Adrienne Rice Adams.
The Vigilant (1948)
Central Park at 59th Street (1918)
Born to a Bellingham timber baron in 1895, Loggie was a globe-hopper. After graduating from Smith College she moved to New York City to learn at the Art Students League, school of luminaries such as Norman Rockwell and Jackson Pollock.
Shuksan in Winter (1938)
Loggie returned to the Northwest after Manhattan studies and European travels, choosing to focus on natural landscapes in the Bellingham and San Juan area. “She’d drawn all the cathedrals,” says Lambiel. “She said, ‘I’m a Northwest artist, and the cathedrals of the Northwest are the trees.’ ”
The King Goblin (1939)
Growing on a tiny island across from Loggie’s Orcas Island house, a gnarled juniper tree inspired Loggie’s best-known works. One version of the Goblin belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but Lambiel owns the original sketch, two etchings, and a hand-blown stained-glass reproduction.
Published in the The Everything Guide to the San Juan Islands issue of Seattle Met.
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