Americana Drawings

In 2015 Bowen inherited a trove of early American books and documents from her deceased parents who were twelfth generation New Englanders. She was intrigued with the stark visual imagery of colonial gravestones and the austere and often patriarchal notations found in Farmer’s Almanacs, primers, maps and scientific treatises. She began to dissect and reclaim these documents to make collages that reimagine Western history from a feminist point of view. She dissected and reconstructed the papers  to create new associations, often giving light to our current cultural and political predicaments. She added decorative elements or patterns over the textual information to create a beautiful visual distraction. Texts appear and disappear beneath organic structures or abstracted body parts and breed new associations and interpretations. Many of the books are phallocentric and the added layers comment on that information. The density of the layers allows for a variety of responses. More is revealed the longer one looks. The works signal to a better potential future while acknowledging the past.