Here Lies

Shadows stretch dramatically against this landscape, making the darkness heavier than the stones dotting the graveyard. The subtle precision and careful balance characterize much of Zama Vanessa Helder’s work in both print and watercolor. Helder worked for the Federal Art Project in Seattle after studying printmaking in New York. She continued to exhibit widely and also helped establish an art center in Spokane, Washington, where fellow instructor Robert Oliver Engard described her teaching: “Vanessa was an exceptionally fine instructor in this respect; she developed enthusiasm of the students in the subject . . . Her work, as you say, has a very definite style, but her students’ work was as varied as there were many people in her class.”