Heather Lowe      Lenticular Fine Art

Heather Lowe’s Wall Nests
by Mat Gleason

There are forty birds for every human being. Not all those people have a home but do all those birds? There are more trees on Earth than there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Birds have nests, bees have hives but hornets have nests as well. You don’t want to know how many hornets there are for every person on Earth. Heather Lowe doesn’t either. She mounts nests on flat walls. Amidst their rococo flair, their rugged composition hosts words formed among the tangle; since we are merely outnumbered humans, we need words. They aid our peculiar travel. We need art for everything else.

Hanging as art, these homes have art within. The decor is tiny lenticulars. They are tastefully shaped, artfully mounted, imagery abstracted like a microscopic plastic transfiguring Diebenkornesque mirage. Will a nest protect a sparrow from a hawk like a locked door protected some of us from intruders when we were young? Better those beautiful lenticulars be there to distract the hawk, to enchant the burglar.

Aesthetics mock the need for security without really interfering. Those lenticulars just reflect the fact that perspective is everything. A nest can be home and a home can be a prison or protection, solace or sentence. Heather Lowe’s sculptures here are physical poems mounted on walls instead of hiding among a trillion trees. Maybe security is an illusion and maybe lenticulars tell lies but while everybody wants their art on the gallery walls, nobody wants a vulnerable nest the next time the hawks in their imagination take flight.