Evan Blackwell-Helgeson

"Backyard Jungle" - colorful abstract work on paper - expressionism - floral

2023

Evan Blackwell-Helgeson is an Atlanta based artist who works in painting, drawing, installation and ceramics. She received a BFA from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia and a MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts in Boston, MA. Her abstract works delve into the memory and archives of abstraction that span beyond the works of the white male artists of the mid-century who became well-known for “discovering” and making popular this genre of artmaking. She looks to the vast array of textiles from African nations such as Kuba cloth from the Congo, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Incan quipu forms of storytelling, aboriginal paintings from Australia and the quilters of Gee’s Bend. These works are often referred to as “artifacts” rather than “art,” and who’s creators' names are lost and not sought out. She has found that contrary to most art history texts, historically, abstraction has been the work of women and of non-white communities across the globe. Abstraction is timeless, globalized, formal and functional - a way of communicating as well as interpreting the world around us. Her works seek to elevate, celebrate and pay homage to these women, Black and Brown artists and communities by being true to her own intuitive forms of mark making and abstraction.