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There is a wide range of media, forms, and structures across Michael Bowllan’s artwork.
Expressive and exaggerated faces are a common focal point, but vary in their visual styles. Pieces range from charcoal sketches and textured collage to acrylic and digital paint. Subject matter is varied in his work as well. There are abstract still lifes of flowers, fruit, or bottles. Buildings and storefronts are distorted and reduced to smudged blocks of color on the canvas.
The abstract and somewhat alien nature evident across all Bowllan’s work is an invitation for the viewer to stop a moment, look closer, and consider the image itself.
Now, one of those works, a floral piece, will live on at Geva Theatre, where an exhibit was held to honor the artist after his death at age 60 earlier this year.
“A lot of people commented that it looks so perfect there when they saw it at the exhibit,” Bowllan’s sister Nancy Fiedler says. “It’s a good way to keep Mike’s artwork in the public eye. In the last years of his life, he wouldn’t have had the capacity for a showing like that. But he would have loved the show.”
It is not yet set, but Bowllan’s family is planning to show his work again in an exhibition, likely the “Small Show” at Lumiere Photo, which he participated in years earlier. It is a way to honor his memory and essence, Fiedler says. Though he faced mental and physical health struggles, Bowllan was a kind and inquisitive soul.
Even as a young child, he was an experimenter. His father, John, encouraged Bowllan in the arts. He worked as a graphic artist for Case-Hoyt printing and would often set his children at an artist’s desk while finishing his own work.
“Mike was the only one of us who had any artistic talent,” Fiedler recalls with a laugh.
She remembers that Bowllan, the youngest of eight children, would spend far more time and effort at the artist’s desk and that it was obvious he had talent, even from an early age.
This was also true of musical aptitude, another endeavor the entire family was encouraged in, but it was clear that Bowllan had the greatest ability for it. Just as with visual art, he continued playing throughout his life and became an accomplished jazz pianist.
“None of us had the talent Mike had. He could sit at a piano and improvise out tunes,” says Fiedler. “And dad, who lived to 97, was constantly coaching Mike and expanding him into different areas.”
Those different areas included embracing new technologies, something Bowllan had a knack for. For example, with the advent of digital photography in the 1980s, he would scan art pieces and manipulate them on a computer.
“Most of us were trying to figure out how to get the mouse to do what we wanted, and he’s doing these doodles with a single movement,” Fiedler recalls.
She believes that art was a haven for Bowllan, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 21. While he struggled with his mental health condition, his sister says Bowllan was the antithesis of any stereotypes about the disease. She remembers him as a kind and gentle person who loved learning new techniques and approaches in life.
“It made it that much harder to see how tortured he felt by voices at times,” Fiedler says.
Then, at age 48, Bowllan developed metastatic lung cancer, which required a treatment of whole-brain radiation therapy. Amid that turmoil, creating art and music was a coping mechanism as well as an outlet when his illnesses became overwhelming.
Living in DePaul mental health housing for the last 10 years of his life, he was beloved by employees and workers who noted his creativity and warmth in their celebration of life message.
“They adored him because he was always sharing his art with them. Mike loved sitting down with someone and telling them how he created a painting,” recalls Fiedler.
Those emotions are what lead her and the rest of Bowllan’s family to want to continue showing his work. The outpouring of appreciation at his memorial celebration showed his importance to his community. They served some of Bowllan’s favorite foods there, none of which were healthy, Fiedler says with a laugh. She rattles off “pizza, hamburgers, and blueberry muffins” with barely a second thought when listing some of his top picks.
Fiedler says that about 100 people attended the memorial celebration, with people connected to him from all the way back when he was age 10, until his 50s and 60s.
“Everyone who knew him loved him because he was kind and he was caring,” she says. “He had his troubles, but despite them, he was a loving person and a tremendous talent.”
Jacob Schermerhorn is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and data journalist.
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