Lowe was born in Eufaula, Alabama as the eighth of twelve children[2] on a sharecropping farm.[3] He was trained as a landscape painter, attending Columbus College in Georgia, before moving to Houston in 1985.[4] There, he created politically charged installations and studied with muralist and painter John Biggers at Texas Southern University.[5][6]
1979-1982: Columbus State University, Columbus, GA.
Project Row Houses' mission is " to be the catalyst for transforming community through the celebration of art and African-American history and culture."[7] Employing the terminology of the German artist Joseph Beuys, Lowe describes the project as "social sculpture."[8][9] He also draws inspiration from the work of artist John T. Biggers (whose own paintings depicted Houston's shotgun houses), working from his Five Pillars: Art and Creativity; Education; Social Safety Nets; Architecture; and Sustainability.[10][11]
PRH dates from 1993, when Lowe and fellow founding six artists James Bettison, Bert Long Jr., Jesse Lott, Floyd Newsum, Bert Samples, and George Smith, alongside community organizers, arranged for the "purchase and restoration of a block and a half of derelict properties — 22 shotgun houses from the 1930s — in Houston's predominantly African American Third Ward."[12][13] With funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation,[14] these houses were then converted to arts spaces, revitalizing the neighborhood and providing community development for the blighted neighborhood. More than 20 years later, according to an ArtNews article, the project has grown to 49 buildings spread out over 10 blocks and has a support program for young mothers.[15]
This unusual amalgam of arts venue and community support center has served as a model for Lowe to expand into other neighborhoods in need of revitalization. The artist has initiated similar projects in the Watts Housing Project in Los Angeles, in post-KatrinaNew Orleans, and in a North Dallas neighborhood with a dense immigrant population.[16]
In 1997 Project Row Houses won the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence, a national design award that seeks to identify and honor projects that address social and economic concerns of urban design.[17]
Lowe developed Trans.lation: Vickery Meadow for the Nasher Sculpture Center's 10th anniversary exhibition "Nasher XChange" and Victoria Square Project in Athens, Greece as a part of documenta 14 in 2017.
Lowe served as a visiting artist at University of California, Berkeley Arts Research Center, a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University, Haas Center Distinguish Visitor at Stanford University, a Mel King Community Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Breeden Scholar at Auburn University, and a Neubauer Collegium Visiting Fellow at the University of Chicago. In 2016 he joined the faculty at the University of Houston's Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts. in 2014.[20][21] He also sits on the board of Mark Bradford’s Art + Practice Foundation.[22] Lowe had a critically reviewed inaugural exhibition at Storage Art Gallery by artist Onyedika Chuke in 2021, which was Lowe's Manhattan debut exhibition, described by Artforum as "paradigmatic".[23] His first exhibition at Gagosian Gallery in the fall of 2022 further solidified his work interrogates social structures, probing questions on wealth disparity, architectural inequity, and aerial discrepancies.[24][25]
^Sargent, Antwaun; Roelstraete, Dieter, eds. (2024). Rick Lowe. New York and Chicago: Gagosian and the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society. ISBN9781951449452.
^Tom Finkelpearl, "Interview: Rick Lowe on Designing Project Row Houses," in Dialogues in Public Art, ed. Tom Finkelpearl (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 243.
^"MacArthur Foundation website". MacArthur Fellows / Meet the Class of 2014 Rick Lowe. MacArthur Foundation. September 17, 2014. Retrieved September 29, 2014.
^"Mission + History". Project Row Houses Mission + History. Retrieved 23 April 2016.
^"MacArthur Foundation website". MacArthur Fellows / Meet the Class of 2014 Rick Lowe. MacArthur Foundation. September 17, 2014. Retrieved September 29, 2014.
