The show that the Nevada Museum of Art is presenting to open the first phase of its expansion—The Art of Judith Lowry—is a big show, in a number of ways.
It’s big in terms of scope, covering more than 30 years of work by Lowry, a painter whose father was of Mountain Maidu, Hammawi Band Pit River, Washo and Scots-Irish descent, and whose mother was an immigrant from Australia. It’s big in terms of context. Lowry’s work probes the seams of Native sovereignty and assimilation, and there are two related exhibitions: one showcasing her collection of work by contemporary Native artists, which she has donated to the museum; and a collection of basketry by Native artists from the Great Basin, Northern California and the Southwest. And it’s big, most immediately, in terms of the scale of Lowry’s work itself.
The figures in most of her paintings—some of them Lowry’s family and friends, others fantastical beings from Maidu stories, and yet others equally fantastical figures from pop culture and history—meet you at a life-sized scale. You’re not just looking into their worlds through the modest window of a typically sized picture frame.
The paintings that illustrate figures and scenes from Maidu stories, passed on to Lowry through her father and grandmother, are links in a chain of storytelling that reaches back through generations. One painting, “Dao-Lulelek,” from 2012, about cataclysmic fire, makes a rather terrifying first impression. Maidu fire spirits dominate the canvas in fierce reds, oranges and yellows. There’s no break from the conflagration, and no exit or pocket of oxygen to be found. The heads of these figures have been painted with meticulous deliberation, with every lick of flame laid down carefully by Lowry’s brush, the flying sparks shining upward. Raggedly arranged needles of flame surround the black mouths like serrations of spiny fangs.
But when one regards the trio’s full figures, it’s apparent they aren’t posed in gestures of berserk rage: They are, in fact, dancing through and among the flames. In their hands, rather than weapons, they hold ceremonial staffs with bristling tufts of fire at their tips. The dancing looks purposeful, choreographed, sacred—not movement for movement’s sake, but movement to connect the body with the world. Through this image, it’s possible to think of wildfire as a ritual the Earth performs upon itself, when conditions demand it.
Alongside the paintings of Maidu story characters, Lowry makes paintings of family members and friends, referenced from snapshots and sitting portraits—the sorts of images that might be fixed behind a sheet of protective cellophane in a family photo album or framed atop a bureau.
The scale of the paintings gives the subjects the stature of kings and queens in court portraits. They’ve been monumentalized with respect, but not saddled with sainthood. In the 1966 painting “Beautiful Dreamers,” Lowry’s father, Leonard, is at a bar with friends, celebrating New Year’s Eve in 1945. He looks sharp in his military uniform, his hair slicked back and glistening. His friends are faintly glamorous in the costume of the era. They are a handsome group, but in the space around them, five cupid-like demons spread fire. Rather than being ambassadors of love, they appear like malicious imps of disaster. Lowry has identified them as demons related to alcohol—the humans in the painting are unaware of their existence, but you wonder if, in a moment, they’ll realize that the hem of their dress or their pant leg has begun to burn.
Lowry’s technique is careful and fastidious. All the details in the paintings are laid out clearly, without any impressionistic shorthand. She delineates every tassel at the end of a scarf and every rectangle of the military ribbons attached to her father’s uniform. When she paints beadwork, each bead sits beside the next one, as if the joining thread was sitting right there at the surface of the canvas.
Lowry isn’t just capturing the details of regalia, clothing or costume. She’s taking inventory. When this is coupled with the scale of her subjects—her community members—as they turn themselves to the camera, it is as though they are addressing themselves to the very eye of history. Through Lowry’s painterly composure and attention, this is precisely what they are doing.
The Art of Judith Lowry is on view at the Nevada Museum of Art, at 160 W. Liberty St., Reno, through Sunday, Nov. 16. For more information, visit www.nevadaart.org/art/exhibitions/the-art-of-judith-lowry.
This article was originally produced by Double Scoop, Nevada’s source for visual arts news.