MILWAUKEE, WI.- Sculpture Milwaukee is presenting Canoe Man, Plains Image, and Untitled, a trio of sculptures made of pine and peeled willow saplings in 1988 by the late Wisconsin artist and celebrated modernist Truman Lowe (1944–2019). The latest additions to Actual Fractals, our current exhibition series, the works are on view now through March 9 in the Ellen & Joe Checota Atrium at the Bradley Symphony Center in downtown Milwaukee.
In his serene and playful sculptures, Lowe, who grew up in a Ho-Chunk community outside of Black River Falls, Wisconsin, refigured supple natural materials into expressive compositions evoking traditional crafts and people and animals who have thrived in the woodlands. From an early age, Lowe learned basketry, beadwork, and other forms of traditional tribal handiwork from his parents, both renowned Ho-Chunk craftspeople. He developed a keen reverence for water and wood, touchstones in his Native culture that became central to his artistic process.
The works on view at the Bradley Center, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s Wisconsin Avenue concert hall, are suffused with formal flow and articulate Lowe’s deep observations of nature, provoking contemplation of what it means to embody qualities of water and live in a symbiotic relationship with ever-changing surroundings. In Canoe Man and Plains Image, figures stand tall, taking in the landscape, while their forms simultaneously resemble the skeletal beginning of a basket. In Untitled, a smaller sculpture is defined by two vertical supports resembling legs, or lapping waves, topped by arching willow suggestive of a bird in flight, or perhaps a bow and arrow.
Throughout this installation, Lowe applies the language of contemporary sculpture to enliven elements of his native culture, continuing the Ho-Chunk tradition of creating objects and sharing open-ended stories about natural land and its inhabitants. “Lowe captures the essence of people and place by allowing his materials to remain bare all while responding to, and working with, their inherent properties,” said artist Teresa Baker, a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, now living in Los Angeles, whose work is also on view now in Actual Fractals. “The resulting sensitivity to the material yields playful, elegant, and defiant sculptures.”
Working with malleable wood, soft organic lines, repetitions, and layering, Lowe drew on far-ranging references in his innovative practice, from his family traditions to the international stylings of twentieth-century minimalism. The open spaces in many of his sculptures also speak to absences and erasures. For example, Effigy: Bird Form, a gently mounded piece he built with polished metal sticks in 1997 for a White House exhibit featuring Native sculptures, now sits on Observatory Hill on the UW-Madison campus, both in tribute to the sacred mounds that were built there by Indigenous people many centuries ago and as poignant reminder that many these mounds were leveled as the campus was built.
A generous trailblazer, Lowe, who earned his MFA at UW-Madison, joined the university’s faculty in 1975 and went on to mentor generations of Native American Studies and art students. He served as chair of the university’s Art Department from 1992-95. He also chaired the Chancellor’s Scholarship Committee, where, from 1984 to 2004, he recruited and supported under-represented students. As one of the foremost Native American artists of the late twentieth century—and an enthusiastic supporter of other artists in general—the impact he had on Native students cannot be underestimated. As UW-Madison art professor and Indigenous artist John Hitchcock has noted, “Truman Lowe is one of the most important Indigenous artists of our time. As a leader, he created a platform for Indigenous communities in the twenty-first century.”
Throughout his life, Lowe was fascinated by the simultaneously stable and ever-changing “liquid” qualities of wood. Water was also an endless source of inspiration and mystery for the artist. “You never know where the water is going to travel next as it begins to overflow its banks or begins to move its channel,” Lowe once said. “You never know what’s going to happen.”
In his art, including Canoe Man, Plains Image, and Untitled, Lowe created space for viewers to breathe and contemplate the gorgeous tensions between static and moving things. Equally, the works provoke a thrilling sense of mystery—of not knowing what’s going to happen—that mirrors the fluidity of nature itself. “Truman’s sculptural compositions kindled magnificent universal abstractions, celebrating our spiritual spheres and the richness of the natural world,” said Wisconsin artist and curator Michelle Grabner, another contributor to our current exhibition. “He taught all who set eyes on his work that in-depth understanding doesn’t come from illustrating systems of belief but from creating forms that fluctuate in their interpretation.”
“I’m thrilled to share Lowe’s historic work on Wisconsin Avenue in the company of modernist and post-minimalist greats like Isamu Noguchi and Meg Webster, and in conversation with the newly commissioned works including those by Teresa Baker and Michelle Grabner,” said Sculpture Milwaukee executive director John Riepenhoff. “I’m also grateful that Wisconsinites have the opportunity to visit these works in person as part of Actual Fractals before they travel on to other parts of the country.”
Truman Lowe (1944-2019) was born in Black River Falls on the Ho-Chunk nation of Wisconsin. He studied art education and art at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse before earning his MFA at UW–Madison. He also spent eight years as Curator of Contemporary Art for the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). In 2007, the Wisconsin Arts Board honored Lowe with the Wisconsin Visual Art Lifetime Achievement Award. A retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work will open at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in October 2025.
