Jean Lowe is a California-based painter and sculptor. She creates installations and sculptural works of enamel-painted

papier-mâché file:JacmelMardiGras.jpg, upright=1.3, Mardi Gras papier-mâché masks, Haiti Papier-mâché ( , , - the French term "mâché" here means "crushed and ground") is a versatile craft technique with roots in ancient China, in which waste paper is s ...

Education and career

Lowe earned a B.A. from

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...

in 1983. She earned her MFA from

UC San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Sc ...

in 1988. She was a lecturer at UC San Diego from 1992 to 2008.

Works

Installations

Lowe's installations are handmade, labor-intensive and visually playful installations with papier-mâché furnishings and objects juxtaposed to site specific wall painting. Lowe says of her installations, "Intellectually I am driven by an interest in challenging a status quo anthropocentric world view and formally interested in marrying that content to a 'domestic' decorative esthetic." Many of Lowe's installations have quoted 18th and 19th century French decoration, rife with romanticized images of animals and nature and imbued with a sense of class and privilege. Into this fabric she substitutes or integrate corresponding contemporary attitudes—both about our treatment of the land and its other inhabitants and our attitudes regarding decoration: the wrestling match between high and low art. Jean Lowe, Accomplishments of Man, The California Center for the Arts, Escondido, CA, 1995. Jean Lowe, Carpet Showroom , Quint Gallery, 2019

Books

Lowe creates sculptural representations of everyday objects using papier-mâché and

enamel paint Enamel paint is paint that air-dries to a hard, usually glossy, finish, used for coating surfaces that are outdoors or otherwise subject to hard wear or variations in temperature; it should not be confused with decorated objects in "painted enam ...

. She is known for her papier-mâché books and has created a large collection of them with evocative and amusing titles. Her work ''Books and Ideas in an Age of Anxiety'' comprises a collection of them in display cases and is situated in Byers Hall at UCSF as part of the J. Michael Bishop Art Collection at Mission Bay. Among the book titles are: *''Accelerated Zen Buddhism: How to Win at the Hereafter'' *''Achieve and Maintain a More Powerful Delusion'' *''Anxiety: The Unexploited Weight Loss Tool'' *''Artistic Mammography'' *''Back to Nature: The Notes of Marie Antoinette'' *''Biblical Family Values'' *''Cachet: What It Is & How to Get It'' *''Close But Not Close Enough: The Case for Primate Experimentation'' *''Craft Your Way to Mental Health'' *''The Death of Painting'' *''The Eco-Tourist's Guide to Las Vegas'' *''Foreclosure Etiquette'' *''Freedom from Rigor & Competence'' *''Great Biceps: In 20 to Life'' *''Great Golf Courses of the World'' *''A Guide to Box Wines'' *''Help Me Make Up My Mind, Lord'' *''The High Fiber Diet'' *''A History of Genital Warts'' *''Hormones and Behavior'' *''Hot Buttered Cop Porn'' *''How to Dominate Women'' *''If God Loves Me, Why Am I Living in My Van?'' *''If God Loves Me, Why Do I Need a Vibrator?'' *''The Jesus Workout'' *''Jet-Skiing Mother Ganges'' *''The Joy of Pickling'' *''Just Ask God: Washboard Abs for Life'' *''Kindle: The Missing Manual'' *''Leadership and You'' *''Liposuction of the Jowls'' *''Militant Feminist Veganism for All'' *''Narcissism and You'' *''Nutritainment'' *''Perfect Poultry: Best Recipes from the Audubon Silver Circle Club'' *''Premature Articulation'' *''A Quotidian Guide to the Basics'' *''Rekindling your Passion for What Might Have Been'' *''Rethinking the Koran'' *''Something Awesome Is Coming Your Way'' *''String Theory'' *''Torture Preparedness'' *''Tough Love and your Elderly Parents'' *''The Triumph of Minimalism'' *''Yosemite: Observations from Behind the Wheel'' *''The Way Things Work: Build Your Own Guillotine'' *''What Would Satan Eat?'' *''When to Tell Your Husband He's Adopted'' *''Who's Who in American Pre-Schools'' *''Who's Who in American Prisons'' *''Who's Who in the Multiverse'' *''Yes, Yes, Yes!'' *''Yoga and Stress Reduction'' *''Your Soul: Fixer Upper or Teardown?''

Exhibitions

Lowe has exhibited in both New York and Los Angeles. She participated in the 1994 exhibition ''Bad Girls West''. In 1995 she collaborated on the installation ''Bull Story'' with artist Kim MacConnel. Lowe's 2012 exhibition ''Hey Sexy!'' blended foregrounds depicting imagery from

consumer culture Consumer culture describes a lifestyle hyper-focused on spending money to buy material or goods. Consumer culture became prominent in the United States during the rapid economic growth of the Roaring Twenties following the end of World War I ...

with baroque decor backgrounds of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. The exhibition incorporated sculptural objects such as tissue boxes, cases of beer, and a store where sculptural recreations of commodities are sold. Lowe's work frequently employs

satire Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposin ...

. In a review of her 2014 exhibition at

Rosamund Felsen Gallery The Rosamund Felsen Gallery is one of the longest-running art galleries in Los Angeles, California, involved in and influencing the broader American art community since its establishment in 1978. The gallery has operated four locations since its ...

, Leah Ollman of the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

'' wrote that she "stabs satirically at broad-scale practices of deception, as well as personal patterns of self-deception." Lowe's works are included in the collections of the

San Diego Museum of Art The San Diego Museum of Art is a fine art museum in Balboa Park in San Diego, California, that houses a broad collection with particular strength in Spanish art. It opened as the Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego on February 28, 1926, and changed ...

, The New Children's Museum, and the

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) is an art museum in La Jolla La Jolla ( , ) is a hilly, seaside neighborhood in San Diego, California, occupying of curving coastline along the Pacific Ocean. The population reported in the ...

Awards and honors

Lowe has twice received fellowships from the Western States Arts Federation/ NEA and has received a grant from the

Pollock-Krasner Foundation The Pollock-Krasner Foundation was established in 1985 for the purpose of providing funding to visual artists internationally to further their artistic practices. It was established at the bequest of Lee Krasner, who was an American abstract expr ...

. She was also awarded the CalArts Alpert/Ucross Residency Prize. She won the Alberta duPont Bonsal Foundation Art Prize in 2000. She was also the recipient of the 2006/2007 San Diego Art Prize.

Personal life

Lowe lives in

Encinitas Encinitas (Spanish language, Spanish for "Small Oaks") is a beach city in the North County (San Diego area), North County area of San Diego County, California, United States. Located in Southern California, it is approximately north of San Di ...

and is married to artist Kim MacConnel.

References

External links

Jean Lowe
at Quint Gallery {{DEFAULTSORT:Lowe, Jean 1960 births Living people 20th-century American women painters 20th-century American painters 21st-century American women painters 21st-century American painters 21st-century American women sculptors 21st-century American sculptors Painters from California University of California, Berkeley alumni University of California, San Diego alumni University of California, San Diego faculty Sculptors from California