Artist: Jean Lowe

Another artist featured in the "Next of Kin" show that I thought was particularly noteworthy was Jean Lowe, who created a room installation that was a "send-up" of French Rococo or Neoclassical Salons . . . she makes papier mache furniture, books, props, etc. and hand paints them, but in this very obviously hand-made sort of way, so that was looks like a big set piece sort of breaks down. For her installation in the show, she did one called "Gentlemen's Club" that discussed the use of apes in the medical research and entertainment industry by creating this club room with hand-painted books in it. Around the room, she created a "four paneled narrative" through the use of a faux wallpaper mural depicting "habitat destruction, transplantation, institutional settings, and species survival strategies" (30). The author, Ron Platt, says her use of this loose hand-made style is a strategy for being too over-the-top or direct with her message, saying"The humor and hand-made touch charm us into considering her environmentally proactive message which might otherwise be dismissed as too heavy-handed or didactic."

The particular piece in the show wasn't online, and the image in the catalog wasn't very interesting either, so I'll just stick a couple of other examples here.

Here's a blog with a few more images of her paintings of these proposed(?) (or maybe realized) because I may have seen a photo of the real thing . . . spaces of European elegance that she puts big-box store items into.