Andy Lowrie
he/they
Baltimore, MD, USA
Andy Lowrie is a jewelry artist who makes sculptural and wearable objects, works on paper and paint-based installations. He is an Australian maker, living, making and teaching in Baltimore.
“My thinking through this work has centered on ribbons and buttons, things we use for function and decoration in adornment. I’m pulling them away from function and into the sphere of decoration. Of course, even a purely decorative object has a function, so when I use that word in this context, I refer to their use as clasps, closures and ties. I’m using them as surfaces to paint and add colour to, as canvases that loop, bend and interact with each other as they drape across the body. They remind me of sitting in my mum’s sewing room and playing with the materials in her boxes of haberdashery.”
What does being queer mean to you in relation to your material choices? Is it something you consider?
“My closeness with my mother, sharing her love for craft and spending so much of my childhood making things with her, was a source of shame for me as a child. Never during the time we spent together, only when those parts of me were revealed to others. Our relationship nurtured the feminine and flamboyant in me, qualities I could be ridiculed for in certain social spaces. I’m learning to embrace the child in me, the feminine and the flamboyant, the part of me that enjoys playing with ribbons and buttons and creating fabulous things with color and form. While making the first brooch in this group (Pussybow No.1) I was thinking about anxiety and getting tongue tied or choked-up, so I tried to put a knot in my sheet metal. I didn’t associate it with the ‘pussybow’ until I finished forming it and decided to place it at the throat. That word, meant for a necktie, has insulting connotations but the form it describes is frequently worn by women and (mostly queer) men to empower and embolden through some wonderfully flamboyant decoration/adornment."
"Pussybow (no.2)", Sterling silver, aluminum, enamel paint, powder coat, stainless steel pin, 5.25" x 5.25" x 2", 2024Is the work queer because the maker is queer, or is it queer because the subject matter is queer?
“The energy and intention in this piece came from a place of embracing and expressing my queerness through color, form and adornment. There is an abstract quality to a bowtie made of metal, paint and plastic, particularly one that does not follow conventional bow aesthetics. I believe that abstraction allows for queerness through its slippery storytelling, its inability to be named and categorized as one thing. But this is not to say that all abstraction is inherently queer, maybe just that there is always room for queerness in its presence. As a wearable piece, my only hope is that there is resonant queerness between me and wearer through it. Do other queer people feel what I feel about this piece? Would a non-queer identifying person wear this piece? If they did, would that allow them to masquerade as queer or embrace a newfound queerness in themselves? I can't know the answers to these questions until this piece starts living its own life, but that is part of the appeal of releasing this work to the world for me."
