Lucy Plowe (BFA ’20) is a painter and sculptor who draws from cross-cultural mythologies, the subconscious and the earth in constructing her narrative-driven pieces. Her relationship to materiality is evident in her dream-like paintings and clay masks.
“…The best moment of the spring semester was when my studio mate and I swapped roles: Madison (@madchalfant), the sculptress and furniture designer, started painting, while I (usually limited to two-dimensional work) made sculptures. This fluid expression of ourselves as artists happened because of the energies we shared in the studio space, and the freedom we felt to make the work we were passionately driven to create…”
Full article: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ancient-insights/202001/battling-addiction
“Art can do amazing things. Explosive anger, the urge to sleep around or watch porn all day, the urge to give up and go back to old habits or enablers: Prudentius says that with a heroic effort—an epic effort—we can overcome them all. And so, as you struggle to keep your resolutions this weekend, Lucy’s artwork can provide a bit of inspiration, and a reminder, that we can win the fight.” — Michael Fontaine
“A few weeks ago, I had the wonderful opportunity to reach out to Lucy Plowe for an interview related to professional practice as an artist…
Winsome: “How did you get started as an artist? Is it different from how you would describe getting started in your own professional practice, or even getting started in the industry in general?”
Lucy: “I’ve always been an artist, since I was old enough to hold a crayon! As I’ve grown up my interested have shifted and developed. I’m currently in my third year at Cornell University for my BFA, but I’m working hard in my independent practice to create work that feels meaningful and important to me. My goals are to go for my MFA in painting after I graduate, and eventually become represented by a gallery so that I can get a footing in the art world and have a career as a practicing artist…”
Lucy Plowe's (B.F.A. '20) summer internship at International Print Center New York (IPCNY) actually began in the fall of 2017 on an art department field trip to New York City, led by associate professors Elisabeth Meyer and Gregory Page. IPCNY was among the various print fairs and shops the group visited during New York Print Week.
Plowe remembered that visit when she began researching internships for the following summer. "Because I'd been interested in printmaking during the school year, I thought it would be enlightening to see the other side of the print world through a summer internship at IPCNY," she says. Her application was accepted along with four other student interns from Notre Dame, Temple, Yale, and the University of Georgia.
Founded in 2000 and located in New York City's Chelsea gallery district, IPCNY is a nonprofit arts institution and exhibition space dedicated to the presentation of prints by emerging, established, national, and international artists. The administrative duties of Plowe's internship included assisting in creating layouts for event brochures, updating IPCNY's website, helping to set up events, and overseeing children's groups and their printmaking crafts.
But, she says, the IPCNY internship also emphasized working closely with the staff to expose the interns to the art world and to the practice of printmaking. Weekly tours and demos at other print shops, galleries, and studios in the city introduced her to topics that were new to her, including mezzotint and aspects of bookmaking. The experience also suggested how she could combine practice and career.
"I really love the idea of splitting my time between running a gallery or a nonprofit and working on my own artistic practice," she says. "Before my summer internship, I didn't even know that was something I could do."
After learning she had secured the internship, Page and AAP's printmaking specialist Julianne Hunter urged Plowe to submit her work to IPCNY's juried exhibition, Multilayered. It was exciting to have her drawing, Fear No Fate, accepted into the exhibition and to be working in the gallery during the show, which opened on June 26 and runs through September 22.
"From the back office I could see people come into the gallery and explore the work, eventually making it to mine," she says. "It was wonderful to talk to some of them and answer questions," she said.
Plowe says the internship will have a lasting impact. "It was really amazing to be immersed in the world that I'm trying to break into as an artist," she says. "The chance to communicate and learn from other artists who work in galleries and in print shops has exposed me to other paths I can take in my professional life."
An exhibition of Plowe's paintings and prints will be on display in Tjaden Hall's Experimental Gallery, September 16–22.
By Patti Witten
Frontispiece of “Quasi Labor Intus: Ambiguity in Latin Literature,” Mixed media, 2017.
Co-edited by Michael Fontaine, Charles J. McNamara, William Michael Short and including a contribution by Rachel Philbrick ’07, the volume is a collection of papers in honor of American priest and friar Reginald Foster, who was the Latinist for four popes. Foster was succeeded at the Vatican by Dan Gallagher, now Professor of the Practice in the Department of Classics, in the College of Arts and Sciences. The volume also includes a contribution by an undergraduate: The frontispiece portrait was painted by Lucy Plowe, B.F.A. '20, who studied in Italy for the College of Art, Architecture and Planning’s Cornell in Rome program.
Work by Lucy Plowe (B.F.A. '20) and Sean Steed (B.Arch. '18) was selected for the juried group show titled Multilayered, opening on June 26 at International Print Center New York (IPCNY).
Featuring work by more than 40 artists, the show is the 58th presentation of International IPCNY's New Prints Program, a biannual, juried exhibition for prints and print-based work created in the preceding 12 months. Multilayered was curated by Juan Sánchez, an artist of the Nuyorican cultural movement. As a multimedia artist with an activist stance, Sánchez draws on symbols, images, and texts from popular and traditional culture to explore questions of ethnic and national identity.
According to the IPCNY's press release, the 43 prints and print-based works on view in Multilayered reflect Sánchez’s interest in "new narratives for an increasingly hybridized cultural world. Many of the artists skillfully deploy traditional printmaking techniques including lithography, etching, woodcut, and screen prints to create enigmatic characters and complex scenes, while others use prints as the basis for expansive installations."
Created for The Hybrid Print, Associate Professor Greg Page's 2018 advanced printmaking class, Plowe's work includes two lithography prints. Titled Fear No Fate, each of the two prints is 20" x 36" on Thai paper.
Steed's work, Tomorrow is looking great / Some things never change, is a series of 12, 31" x 42" silkscreen monotypes that provide a commentary on contemporary political campaigns. Created for Associate Professor Elisabeth Meyer's fall 2017 class Painting to Print: Monotype, Steed's posters contain phrases from political slogans or speeches and nationalist rhymes and comment on the idea of national flags and identity.
Multilayered is on display at IPCNY until September 22. A reception and talks by the artists will be held on Thursday, June 28, from 6 to 8 p.m.
"Fear No Fate," 2018. Plate lithography diptych. 36x20" each. Edition: Unique.
Unique lithograph diptych "Fear No Fate" included in juried show Multilayered: New Prints/2018 Summer show at the International Print Center New York.
IPCNY is pleased to present the fifty-eighth presentation of its New Prints Program, a biannual, juried open call for prints and print-based work created in the preceding twelve months. Titled Multilayered, the exhibition was selected by Juan Sánchez, one of the most significant artists of the Nuyorican cultural movement. As a multimedia artist with an activist stance, Sánchez draws on symbols, images, and texts from popular and traditional culture to explore questions of ethnic and national identity. Sánchez dedicates this exhibition to Sam Coronado (1946 – 2013), a printmaker, activist, and educator who dedicated his life to the Latinx arts community.
The 43 prints and print-based works on view in Multilayered reflect Sánchez’s interest in new narratives for an increasingly hybridized cultural world. Many of the artists skillfully deploy traditional printmaking techniques, including lithography, etching, woodcut, and screenprints, to create enigmatic characters and complex scenes, while others use prints as the basis for expansive installations. In this exhibition, Sánchez also places particular emphasis on hand-made artist books, many of which overtly address current social and political themes. The artists on view also display a particular propensity towards experimenting with mediums, combining traditional commercial materials with a great variety of handmade papers, and adding embroidery, gold leaf, and even mushroom spores to their prints.
June 26–September 22 2018.
"Cleopatra," 7x10", woodcut, edition of 10, 2017.
"Cleopatra" and "The Tulpa" included in the "I See You" (IC/CU) Exhibition at the Ink Shop & Olive Branch Press in Ithaca, NY.