Some of her work shows the impact that color had as it entered American printmaking during this period, and she was adventurous in exploring the possibilities opened up by screen printing.
At first glance, this depiction of women sharing a crowded work space might appear to be impartial reportage, but Helfond’s iteration of the downward curves of each woman’s body expressively conveys the tiring nature of their repetitive tasks.
[6] After Helfond married Bill Barrett, whose Welsh relatives worked in the mines, she used these new connections to bring other artists interested in social justice together with the miners.
For one thing, she was irked that the gatherings of miners and her male artist friends in the local bars tended to exclude her and other women, making it harder for her to develop the relationships necessary to her work.
[7] Another obstacle sprang from cultural differences: Helfond recounted how in the mining town of Lansford, the local women became less friendly when she revealed that she was Jewish.
Helfond counted as friends a wide circle of Abstract Expressionist artists and critics, including Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline, and Harold Rosenberg.
In 1972 Helfond and fellow artists Hyman Warsager, Lois Berghoff, Zelda Burdick, and Lila Ryan formed “Five Directions in Graphics", a group of printmakers that exhibited together.