Lynn Bower

Lynn Bower was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1949, and grew up in Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan. In 1984, she moved to the Bloomington area. She has a Magna Cum Laude degree from Western Michigan University (BS, Art Education, 1972) with a major in drawing and a minor in graphic design. She married her husband, John Bower, in 1972. They met as first-year teachers at the Kendallville (Indiana) Middle School.

In 1992, the Bowers founded a publishing company, The Healthy House Institute, to produce books and videos dealing with improved indoor air quality, healthy construction techniques, and healthy lifestyle. Their last healthy-house book was published in 2001 and they sold The Healthy House Institute in 2008.

In 2003, the Bowers founded a new publishing company, Studio Indiana, to produce Indiana photography books, based on John's black-and-white photography. The design and layout for these books is done by Lynn.

Lynn also creates artwork on her own using a variety of media, some of which are are available through their Studio Indiana web site. These include metal (copper, brass, and aluminum in tooled and sculptural pieces), glass, metal, and wood (jewelry), and pen-and-ink (drawings), among others. Importantly, since 2000, she has used a digitizing computer drawing tablet in conjunction with a sophisticated painting program to produce giclee prints. Lynn's prints have been shown in a number of one- and two-person exhibitions (along with her husband John's photographs). In early 2011, she and her husband, John Bower, were named Distinguished Hoosiers by Governor Daniels.

Lynn's Artist Statement

Life should be a daily celebration of the opportunities, possibilities, and potentials presented to each of us. However, too often, this basic truth is either lost or set aside, as we perpetuate what was done before, and compromise for the comfort of acceptability. In doing so, we unknowingly limit ourselves to only the fastest, and easiest, and safest of outcomes.The purpose of my work is to gently nudge people awake from the seductive trance of the predictable—to get them to question the routine—and to smile. To do this, I often depict everyday cultural behavior with humor, an unexpected twist, or an unusual point of view. In other pieces, I rouse the dormant sense of wonder we all experienced as children. In short, my art is designed to stir sleeping souls, and my hope is that viewers, who have been made comatose by bland predictability, will open their eyes, and opt for more direct, authentic lives.