Jean Lowe Still-life Sculptures

A contemporary ceramic paperweight with black, grey, and white glaze by Jean Lowe on a white background. Executive (Paperweight) Signed and inscribed “AP,” verso Enamel on ceramic ...

Jean Lowe (American, b. 1960) Book-form sculpture, 2004 "Please Don't Eat Daisy", Enamel painted papier-mache Hand signed and dated verso Dimensions 10.5"h x 12.75"w x 4"d This title is well suited for vegetarians, vegans and plant based diets! Jean Lowe is a California-based painter and sculptor. She creates installations and sculptural works of enamel-painted papier-mâché. Lowe earned a B.A. from UC Berkeley in 1983. She earned her MFA from UC San Diego in 1988. She was a lecturer at UC San Diego from 1992 to 2008. 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. Wry humor. Lowe creates sculptural representations of everyday objects using papier-mâché and enamel paint. 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. Anxiety: The Unexploited Weight Loss Tool. Artistic Mammography. The Eco-Tourist's Guide to Las Vegas. A Guide to Box Wines. Hot Buttered Cop Porn. How to Dominate Women. Militant Feminist Veganism for All. The Triumph of Minimalism and other such titles. Exhibitions Lowe has exhibited in both New York and Los Angeles. She participated in the 1994 exhibition Bad Girls West. Curated by Marcia Tucker, Bad Girls was a humorous and transgressive look at gender and feminist issues. It featured work from artist across many media, including photo, painting, sculpture, performance, film, comics, advertisements, writings and more. Janine Antoni, Andrea Bowers, Nancy Dwyer, The Guerrilla Girls...