Arts

ARTS Something His Own

Inside the practice of Belmont native and artist Juan Logan

BY LAUREN PIEMONT PHOTOGRAPHS BY JONATHAN COOPER

Juan Logan (above) flanked between “Elegy LXVIII” and “Elegy LXIX” on his right, and in his studio below, opening a sculpture titled “Doubt.” JUAN LOGAN carved his rst artwork from white pine in 1960, when he was a student at Reid High School in Belmont. It was a sculpture of an eagle with a 5-foot wingspan, created in art class. “My then-instructor told me the most important thing about it was it didn’t have to look like anyone else’s,” Logan says by phone. “It could just be mine. And that sort of changed everything for me.”

Today, at 73, Logan works daily at his sprawling studio back in Belmont, though his work has taken him across the world. Visual art is his profession and passion, as it is for his wife, curator Jonell Logan. Logan’s also one of countless artists who this year have had to endure the immovable foe of coronavirus: Since January, the Hickory Museum of Art has displayed a broad selection of Logan’s work in an exhibition titled Creating & Collecting, originally scheduled to last until May 10. The exhibition also incorporates works from Logan’s inspirations, like Jasper Johns, Elizabeth Catlett, and Robert Motherwell, some of whom are and were his friends. But the virus forced the museum to close in March and wasn’t reopened as of presstime—although it o ered a catalogue of his works for purchase, with an essay by Dr. Jennifer Sudul Edwards, the Mint Museum’s chief curator. (You can still view a virtual version of the exhibition on the museum’s site.)

Logan’s work o en poses questions about race, class, and religion. These social queries are the foundation of his practice. He admits that his early work too o en answered the questions instead of asking them. As he’s matured, he says, he’s taken a more open-ended approach and shirked the label of “social issues artist.”

“It’s not just race that I’m talking about,” he says. “It’s more of a state of being and what we are doing with it. When I talk about memory, it’s not a racialized memory that I’m talking about. It’s sort of the same for all of us. In my artist statement, I talk about looking at the material and mental landscapes we live in because it impacts all of us on a daily basis.

“These days, the paintings deal with memory, both collective and otherwise. And realizing the things we hold on to—or at least try