Helen Gilbert (1922 – 8 April 2002), also known as Helen Gilbert-Bushnell, Helen Odell Gilbert and Helen Odell, was an American artist and art-educator born in Mare Island, California. She earned a baccalaureate in art at

Mills College Mills College at Northeastern University is a private college in Oakland, California and part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was ...

, in California. After graduation, she moved to Honolulu, where she married Honolulu physician Fred Gilbert. In 1968, she received an Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and then remained on the faculty for 30 years. Her second marriage was to fellow artist

Kenneth Wayne Bushnell Kenneth Wayne Bushnell (October 16, 1933 - October 4, 2020) was an American visual artist, who was born in Los Angeles, California, Los Angeles. He earned a BA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1958, and then moved to Hawaii, whe ...

in 1995. She had also been a visiting professor at

Parsons The New School for Design Parsons School of Design, known colloquially as Parsons, is a private art and design college located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhatt ...

and the

Pratt Institute Pratt Institute is a private university with its main campus in Brooklyn, New York (state), New York. It has a satellite campus in Manhattan and an extension campus in Utica, New York at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. The school was ...

. She died at home on April 8, 2002.Shapiro, Treena, "Painter's work occupied museums around world", ''Honolulu Star-Bulletin''
Although she painted images of the land and people of Hawaii with brush and palette knife, her fame rests upon her pioneering use of

polarized light Polarization (also polarisation) is a property applying to transverse waves that specifies the geometrical orientation of the oscillations. In a transverse wave, the direction of the oscillation is perpendicular to the direction of motion of the ...

in kinetic sculpture. ''Licomos'', a kinetic sculpture from 1970, in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art is an example. The colors change as they move around in a circle behind stationary

Plexiglass Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) belongs to a group of materials called engineering plastics. It is a transparent thermoplastic. PMMA is also known as acrylic, acrylic glass, as well as by the trade names and brands Crylux, Plexiglas, Acrylite, ...

. The

Bibliothèque nationale de France The Bibliothèque nationale de France (, 'National Library of France'; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites known respectively as ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository ...

, the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Georgia Museum of Art, the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

(New York), the

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...

(New York),

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (; Municipal Museum Amsterdam), colloquially known as the Stedelijk, is a museum for modern art, contemporary art, and design located in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

, the

Tate Gallery Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

(London), Tokyo National Museum, the

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, t ...

(Minneapolis), and the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...

(New York) are among the public collections holding works by Helen Gilbert.Wisnosky, John and Tom Klobe, ''A Tradition of Excellence'', University of Hawai'i, Honolulu, 2002, page 58.

References

*Wisnosky, John and Tom Klobe, ''A Tradition of Excellence'', Hawaiʻi, Honolulu, 2002, pages 56–59. *Yoshihara, Lisa A., ''Collective Visions'',

Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts The Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts was established by the Hawaii State Legislature in 1965 to "promote, perpetuate, preserve, and encourage culture and the arts, history and the humanities as central to the quality of life of the ...

, Honolulu, 1997, page 41.

Footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gilbert, Helen 1922 births 2002 deaths 20th-century American sculptors 20th-century American women sculptors Artists from Hawaii Kinetic sculptors Mills College alumni University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa alumni University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa faculty Sculptors from California Artists from Vallejo, California American women academics