Bruce Lowney never sets out to make pretty prints. Interesting, sure. Maybe even thought-provoking.
But not pretty.
"(My work) is not decorative," Lowney said. "I never was an art-for-art's-sake type of guy. ... It's like trying to make a picture that's worth a thousand words— making it have a substance that's beyond me personally."
In his color lithograph "The Gardener," what appears to be the top of a man's head pokes through the ground. In "The Diver" a man plunges headfirst over a picket fence and into an oncoming blue-green wave.
"Everything is representational or naturalistic, but that's not where it ends," Lowney said.
Lowney, whose lithographs are on display through Feb. 8 at Artspace 116 in a show called "The Imaginative Mind of Bruce Lowney," likes to compare his work to poetry.
"(A poet) writes something where he's trying to speak in another vein or another context," Lowney said. "He would use words like a journalist would use words, but it's a different way of expression."
Lowney said his work could be considered challenging— "that might be the word," he said— and believes it speaks to some people more than others.
"Either you get it, or you don't," he said. "I don't think there's too broad of an interpretation."
Now 70, Lowney has been a printer for decades. He earned his Master of Arts degree in printmaking and art history from San Francisco State University in 1966. He worked as a graduate assistant under Garo Antreasian, then the technical director for the Tamarind Institute.
"I went from Tamarind to a print shop in L.A. for a few months and then up to a shop for a couple of months in San Francisco," said Lowney, a California native. "I didn't do much professional printing, but I was trained in that regard.
"I was more intent on my own work."
Lowney got a big break of sorts when he won the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award in printmaking in 1969. The cash award enabled him to buy his own press and printing equipment.
"That award just set me free. I had my own shop and didn't have to print for others and could just concentrate on my own work," he said.
Lowney— who took part in the Roswell Artist In Residence program in 1970 and 1974— has lived in New Mexico for the past 35 years. His current residence is between Grants and Zuni, a rural setting without much to interrupt him from his art.
"I find people say my work is different. Not that I'm the only person in the world doing this, but it's not decorative or Southwestern art, it's my expression. ... I'm not trying to be unique," he said. "I'm just trying to be true to my own ideas."
If you go
WHAT: "The Imaginative Mind of Bruce Lowney: Lithographs 1975-2007"
WHEN: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday through Feb. 8 (Gallery closed Dec. 24-25 and Dec. 31-Jan. 1)
WHERE: Artspace 116, 116 Central SW, Suite 201
