RICK LOWE MOVES THE NEEDLE

Rick Lowe portrait by Ernesto Leon. Rick Lowe facebook

Project Row Houses campus with Houston skyline. National Endowment for the Arts website 2013. Project Row Houses facebook

Any way you look at it, the MacArthur Foundation’s $625,000 is an eye-popping award. Houston artist Rick Lowe (b. 1961) said he was “completely floored” when he received it in 2014. One year before, President Obama appointed Lowe to the National Arts Council which advises the National Endowment for the Arts. These and a myriad of other honors befell Lowe for transforming 22 abandoned row houses in Houston’s Third Ward into the nonprofit Project Row Houses (PRH.) The organization hosts art exhibitions and residencies, education, a young mothers’ residential program, and a business incubation program. As gentrification pushes out low income residents, PRH punches back by purchasing, renovating, and leasing out at affordable prices. It partners with owners to preserve and make affordable historical properties.

Shyriaka Morris’ participation in PRH’s young mothers’ residential program helped her earn a doctorate. Others landed law degrees. Last month when the Ford Foundation forked over $3.5 million, it called PRH “a cultural treasure.”

“If you think about it, Rick sacrificed his career during that time.” Artists Floyd Newsum and Bert Samples are discussing the cradle days of PRH in an interview with Maria Gaztambide. In 1993, Rick Lowe, James Bettison, Bert Long, Jr., Jesse Lott, Floyd Newsum, Bert Samples, and George Smith tossed around ideas about an exhibition venue that would positively impact Houston’s African American communities. Lowe believed the row houses served their purpose. Samples recalled arguments. “Rick was the catalyst, had swell ideas, and Jesse was what I would call on the basketball court, the enforcer, holding Rick accountable for what he’s gonna accomplish, and he wasn’t just challenging Rick, he was challenging all of us. That was where I think we first saw ourselves as a group, not knowing what we were gonna do,” yet committed.

Newsum recalled nasty dirty work. While removing debris under a row house, his clothes got covered with black specs, “they were fleas,” but he figured fleas were better than discarded drug needles. “This institution brought the whole community, the city, from River Oaks, to Memorial, wherever, every race, class came together to help us, to unify, to transform this area. It was Rick who really was the force, if it had not been for Rick, PRH

Art League Installation shot. Rick Lowe, Untitled, 2020, acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 96 x 180 in. (10 panels). Art League facebook

would not be what it is.”

One imagines their early discussions helped Lowe communicate his vision. And primed him to collaborate with volunteers, donors, grant writers, foundations, ultimately a professional staff. Factor in innate talent to chat-up others. The middle child in a large family learns to maneuver.

Throughout, he considered PRH part of his artistic practice. This fits comfortably within the post-modern era’s broader definitions of art (which idiotically included body functions.) Lowe’s expanded definition rests on community engagement and revitalization. He extrapolated from German artist Joseph Beuys’ idea of art as participatory activities that shaped the world around us, which Beuys labeled “social sculpture.” Lowe applied social sculpture to the community. He said artists like him who enhance communities are pioneers, for expanding notions what art can be. The New York Times agreed. It labeled PRH the most original and ambitious work of art of the past century.

An additional factor set Lowe on his path. Disillusioned with the politically loud figurative art he was making, in 1992 he closed his studio and searched for authentic expression. It resonated that row houses, an architectural form rooted in Africa, held iconographic weight in his teacher Texas Southern University Dr. John Biggers’s paintings. Doc Biggers imbued row houses with “beauty, poetry, inspiration.” Third Ward row houses, he figured, offered a chance to merge activism and art.

Is his rural Alabama family proud of his accomplishments? “Art stuff” doesn’t interest them, they’d be more impressed if he was helping to pick peas and okra.

Once a year, Art League Houston exhibits its “Artist of the Year.” The art he is showing, Lowe said, derives from domino games he plays with Jesse Lott at PRH, their battles ratcheted up with noisy bluffing and table clattering. Their games have “physicality.” After handing the castle’s keys to PRH staff in November + December 2020 | Intown |13 2018, he began to sketch domino patterns as starting points for artworks. He didn’t abandon community engaged art, there’s a project in Tulsa and Athens Greece, more coming, as well as prestigious fellowships and teaching at the University of Houston. In the studio though he’s cranking out aesthetically elevated paintings and drawings concerned with formal properties of color and form.

It’s takes guts to use pink. Lowe renders it seductive by offsetting cooler tones. His handling of collage texture is wicked, painting surfaces have smoothness and tactility in equal measure. Don’t plop yourself at Art League’s door like I did, it’s locked for the virus, but the on-line appointment process

Rick Lowe, Untitled (orange), 2020, acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 72 x 60 in. Loan to Art League, Courtesy of the Artist & Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston, TX

is totally painless. Soon I was gawking at an orgy of color in the exhibition “Rick Lowe: New Paintings & Drawings” through April 24, 2021.

My instinct tells me the domino shapes in the supposedly non-referential abstractions are a soft-core reference to community. Lowe likened the patterns to neighborhood maps. It’s not farfetched to associate them with the urban planning concept of “red lining” in which banks and mortgage companies penalize low income neighborhoods. Nor, to tie them to the old men who play dominoes under trees, know everybody’s business, and have valuable insight into neighborhood conditions. At this level of social commitment, it’s absurd to make nit-picky distinctions between pleasure driven art and social content art. The entire shebang has spiritual gravity.

In 2009, Lowe overlapped social engagement with photography. Drawn to the photo “Brother in Law” of a spiffedup dude holding a plate of grilled chick-

Rick Lowe Portrait by Ernesto Leon. Rick Lowe Instagram

en, I mentioned it in a newspaper article. At the time, I assumed he was a popular Third Ward restauranteur, but later learned Eugene Howard had served over twenty years in prison. His pre-prison

Rick Lowe, Untitled (pink) 2020, acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 72 x 60 in. Loan to Art League, Courtesy of the Artist & Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston, TX dream was to own a restaurant, so Lowe staged him that way. Mirroring the row houses’ shift from connoting blight to positive symbols, Lowe re-branded Howard into a positive symbol.

Custom Design: Suits • Shirts • Tuxedo • Pants | Repairs & Alterations: Men & Women

We are committed to meeting our customer’s needs in an honest, reliable and personal manner. Your high standard is our commitment.

Custom made shirts in our shop.

Ask about our frequent buyers program.

3801 Kirby Drive, Suite 100 Houston, TX (713) 520-6090 | qctailors.com

Whether you’re new to the Kelsey-Seybold family or a current patient, you have a choice of where you can safely get care. Call our 24/7 Contact Center at 713-442-0000 to schedule a same-day or nextday virtual Video Visit or, for non-respiratory illnesses, an in-person appointment at Kelsey-Seybold’s Downtown at The Shops location or a Kelsey-Seybold location near you.

Your health and safety are our top priority. We’re screening patients upon arrival for COVID-19 symptoms, conducting temperature checks, and following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.

Do you feel more comfortable visiting with a Kelsey-Seybold doctor from your home? We also offer Video Visits for children and adults. Visit kelsey-seybold.com/virtual to find out more.

Our doctors and clinical teams are here for you now and in the future.

WE’RE HERE FOR YOU 24/7/365

1200 McKinney, Suite 473 Houston, TX 77010 713-442-4700

713-442-0000

mykelseyonline.com

713-442-6565 (7 days a week, 7 a.m. – 9 p.m.)

713-442-0000

WELCOMING NEW PATIENTS and ACCEPTING more than 50 HEALTH PLANS, including Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, and UnitedHealthcare