Remembering: Harold B. Helwig

Harold B. “Bill” Helwig, a prominent artist, educator, and leading figure in the contemporary enamels field, died July 12, 2012, in Newport, Kentucky, at the age of 73. 

Helwig was born on July 23, 1938, in Wellington, Kansas. His first formal exposure to art came when he took a summer course in drawing and watercolor in 1956 after he graduated from high school. He entered Fort Hayes Kansas State College as a premed major, eventually deciding to pursue his newfound passion for art instead. During his senior year, Helwig was introduced to enamels while serving as an assistant to Deirdre Burant, who was preparing work for her master’s thesis exhibition in jewelry and needed help applying enamel to silver. While this was his first foray into enameling, he did not immediately take to the medium. He graduated with his BS in 1960 and went on to pursue his MS in watercolor from Fort Hayes, and he received it in 1961. After a two-year stint in Europe serving in the Army, Helwig returned to the United States in 1964 and became the assistant director of the Creative Craft Center at the State University of New York, Buffalo (SUNY). In 1973, Helwig was named assistant professor in the Design Department of SUNY. It was during this time that, at the suggestion of his colleague (acclaimed metalsmith Jean Delius) Helwig began to explore enameling as his primary medium.    

At SUNY, Helwig’s personal and professional lives both flourished. In 1968, he married fiber artist Lenore Davis (1947-1995), who inspired, as well as promoted, his work (see her October 1974 article on Helwig in Craft Horizons).  Together they experimented in their respective mediums and became increasingly recognized in the larger studio craft community. Helwig began employing a painterly Limoges technique and multidimensional layering to create allegorical pieces exploring human relationships and sexual desire, as well as spiritual longing. In the 1970s he expanded his repertoire by working with copper and nearly-extinct enameling methods, including grisaille enameling, impasto, and camaieu techniques.

In 1969, Helwig’s work was selected for the international exhibition "Objects: USA." During this time and throughout the next 40 years, Helwig’s enameled pieces would be shown at hundreds of other exhibitions throughout the U.S. and the world, including the Ornamental Metals Museum in Memphis, Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York City, the Hand and the Spirit Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, and the CCA Galleries in Cambridge, England. Helwig was most recently featured in Painting with Fire: Masters of Enameling in America, 1930 – 1980, a publication which accompanied an exhibition of the same name at the Long Beach Museum of Art in California (2007).

During the late 1960s and 1970s, Helwig was also an active member of the American Craft Council.  He participated in ACC fairs as an artist for many years before focusing his energies on administration. Starting in 1970, he served as the chairman for the NE Regional Chapter Craft Fair, held in Bennington, Vermont.  He went on to serve on the board of directors of the NE Chapter during the launch of one of the largest ACC fairs, featuring 300 artists from east of the Mississippi, and held in Baltimore in 1977.  

It was also in 1977 that Helwig decided to leave academia for an opportunity to lead the Vitrearc division at Carpenter’s Ceramic Coating Company in Newport, Kentucky. Carpenter subsequently purchased Thompson Enamel, becoming the foremost supplier of enameling materials in the country. Helwig worked at Thompson Enamel, educating artists as a consultant on both the enameling process and materials, until 1985.

Helwig was involved in the enameling field in numerous additional ways throughout his life. In 1982 he served as cofounder and editor of Glass on Metal, the highly influential bimonthly newsletter/journal. He also served on the board of the Enamelist Society from 1991 to 1998 and received the Society’s prestigious Creative Arts Award in 2001. In addition, Helwig led classes and workshops at craft schools including Penland, Arrowmont, and Haystack and at other major universities and colleges late into his life.

For more information on the life and work of Bill Helwig, visit the Enamel Arts Foundation.