ARTS: Something His Own

Inside the practice of Belmont native and artist Juan Logan

- By Lauren Piemont

JUAN LOGAN carved his first 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 the 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 press time—although it offered a catalog 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.)