Four Years Ago Today: In appreciation of Tom Lowe

By Susan Werner

[Originally published on November 23, 2014. Tom Lowe, the author of yesterday’s column, had died a month earlier, on October 24. The author submitted this tribute under these words:

I am writing with appreciation of Tom Lowe, and his contributions to illustrating our activism for human rights at St. Mary’s Center in Oakland, California, a non-profit community of hope, healing, and justice serving extremely low-income preschoolers and seniors, with comprehensive services for seniors who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.
    Tom actively engaged in St. Mary’s Center’s pursuit of social justice. He also exhibited and contributed his art and photos to our Center, and a few are currently on display.
    In collaboration with Tom and using material compiled by Maureen Hartmann, I wrote this story about him describing influences in his life and his motivation as an artist. The article was originally published in September 2005, under the title, “Tom Lowe Photography,” in Street Spirit, Justice News and Homeless Blues, a publication of the American Friends Service Committee.
    In gratitude for Tom’s unique eye for the dignity of people.]

Website banner of the site in whose publication
this essay originally appeared

Tom Lowe, a senior and a community member of St. Mary’s Center, recently agreed to a daring escapade in his life: to display his photography, which had been in the dark in a sturdy black portfolio case. Tom has brought to light images, moments of his life of nearly 30 years ago, in an exhibit that is in the dining hall at St. Mary’s Center.
    For Tom, contemplating the exhibit has “been a chance to look again at my creative work and what it means to me. I was a little nervous. What if no one even notices?” Willing to risk the unknown and follow through with displaying his photographs, Tom has opened to a new chapter in his life. “The response has been very positive, lots of warm and perceptive comments. I underestimated my audience, which I won’t do in the future.”
    Tom’s talent as a photographer can be traced back to age seven, when his adopted parents gave him a Box Brownie camera. With adult eyes, he describes these early photographs, “though they lacked in technical precision, they showed coherency in perceiving an image.” Blushing, he adds, “Hey, the kid’s got talent!”
    Tom’s creative flow has been a lifeline for him; a constant current, amidst life circumstances that have not matched some of his actual needs for nurturance and appreciation of his originality. Tom, raised since six months by adoptive parents, appreciates that “they were educators and encouraged my mind and curiosity. Pencils, paper, and books were out in the house where I could use them. From age five to ten I was fortunate to live in Mendocino County. I was stimulated by my environment and explored the wide spaces outside. Drawing and taking photos came out of a desire to communicate my fascination with nature and people.” When Tom later learned about photographers Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange, he discovered similarities amongst his and their early photography experiences.
    Tom also had a knack for writing, which he is embarrassed to admit that he took for granted. In high school, Tom felt recognized by teachers for his writing ability. “I never thought writing was difficult. I never worked on writing. I always just did it. I discovered that I was an above-average writer.”

Art-making and wide reading became a way of life for Tom, one that he initiated after school, on weekends, and throughout the summer. “Like George Bernard Shaw, I never let school interfere with my education. I needed to follow my muse.” In his second art class in high school, Tom received an F+ and was barred from the following year’s class. Tom reflects, “The teacher, not a working artist, approached art with a small-town social-grace outlook. She had certain rules and procedures for art making. I drew what interested me, which she felt was insubordinate. She did not provide me necessary inspiration.” Tom recalls an assignment in that art class to speak about an artist. Most students presented traditional artists recognized in the early Sixties – i.e., Rembrandt, Norman Rockwell. Tom presented Jackson Pollock and recalls, with a satisfied glint in his eyes, “I remember the faces in front of me appearing blank, as if saying, What the heck is he talking about? I just felt look.” Tom, undaunted, continued to follow his muse, and to study art, photography, and journalism in high school. He discovered that he wasn’t interested in conventional careers, such as business or teaching.
    Tom graduated with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts in 1970 from the San Francisco Art Institute, and later studied photojournalism in a master’s program at Fresno State College. He kept in touch with friends dating back to junior high school, noting that some dared to make careers out of being a poet, an architect, a cartoonist, while others confined their art to a hobby. Tom supported himself financially through his school years working as a photographic lab technician, a clerk in bookstores, and a designer/artist for the underground press.

Morris Knudsen
(1974 photo taken by Tom)

    Over the years Tom received encouragement from friends and a former Tulare high school teacher, Morris Knudsen (1927-2014), to take his talent for writing seriously. In his late thirties, Tom worked for McGraw Hill and the Defense ManPower Data Center and wrote questions for vocational and school tests. In his forties he “fell on hard times” and “had trouble maintaining a job.” He sold much of his photographic equipment in order to pay his rent. He saved a few photos from this time of his life, and fondly recalls an image of Reverend Cecil Williams at a demonstration in support of PATCO, the air traffic controller’s union whose members were fired by President Reagan for striking.

Tom lived in Santa Cruz in his forties and created art in his home. He experimented with “tie dyeing” liquid acrylic, treated as watercolors, onto canvas up to six feet wide. He laid the artwork on the deck to dry. Tom’s landlord “got very huffy about potential damage to the property, and threatened to charge me for replacing the deck.” Tom feared being evicted, which diminished his exploration of this form of painting. Given the insuppressible nature of his creativity, Tom reshaped his creative flow to drawing with watercolor inks and colored pens on 15" x 20" paper, a size that fit on tabletops. Meanwhile, Tom continued to develop his photography, using darkroom equipment in his bedroom. He transformed the deck into a garden, to his and his cat’s delight.
    In 1980, Tom studied video production at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and produced two videos set to music by Handel and Santana. One concerned a mural of Hispanic history in the Merrill College dorms, another featured the Koi in the fountain at Porter College at UC Santa Cruz. Both videos aired on a local cable channel. Tom also completed a second bachelor’s degree, in Asian history.
    In his late forties, Tom spent two years in Montana focusing on family matters, and his artistic expression slacked, for which he “suffered.” Tom continued to pursue a way to express and apply his curiosity and imagination. He explored graduate studies in public administration and computer sciences, though neither was a fulfilling pursuit.
    In an unbidden, yet conceivably prophetic moment of feeling lost in life, Tom became homeless at age 59. He had never lived on the street before. In a shattered state, he harbored himself, and his life dreams, at the Berkeley YMCA. Tom followed up on a referral to St. Mary’s Center, where he met Sister Mary Nolan, who came to be his case manager. He credits Sister Mary’s “street smarts and experience with making a decrepit social service system work” with saving him from many mistakes. Tom became housed three months later at the Alice Arts Center, now renamed the Malonga Casquelord Center, where he continues to reside among its rich diversity of musicians, dancers, writers, and visual artists. Tom also obtained employment through ASSETS Senior Employment Opportunities Program, a federally funded program. Tom currently works as assistant to Wayne Haught, the Director of Outreach, which translates to doing whatever is needed, ranging from organizing personnel files, to maintaining computers, to helping clients attain computer literacy. “All the little things that keep the system working.”

Tom was cautious about revealing his passion for creative expression to people at St. Mary’s Center. Several months after meeting with Sister Mary, Tom took a daring step; he presented Sister Mary a painting of a vivid burst of yellow, red, and orange color light, crisp as sunrise, and ablaze as summer heat. Tom drew inspiration for the colors of this image, “Jose’s Sun,” from the bright colors of an image “Amends” by Jose Querdo. “I used to sit and look at the drawing by Jose while waiting to meet with Sister Mary. Sister Mary suggested that I frame ‘Jose’s Sun’ in a way to support the expansive energy.”

    Tom’s growing unfolded to his acceptance of the invitation to display his photographs. With the assistance of Susan Werner, creative arts facilitator, Tom undertook framing and displaying 11 photographs in St. Mary’s Center’s dining hall.

One of the images is of Ken Minor, a community member of St. Mary’s. The facial expression, and emphatic finger gesture of this portraiture, evokes vociferousness, consummate with Ken’s passion for speaking out for the needs of poor people.
    Another photograph, “Bicentennial Moment, 1976,” is a relic of a more feminist time; a sticker on an Opel station wagon window reads, “Two Hundred Years of Inequality is Nothing to Celebrate.” Some other images are of pets of friends: “Daisy in the Weeds” and “Laurie’s Duck.”

    Tom considers displaying his photography as a possible time of transition in his life: potentially marking a resurgence of creative expression. How this will unfold is uncertain. He wonders if, like Moses, in Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, he is fated to see the promise, yet never reach it.
    Tom has dreams of obtaining equipment to further apply his skill as a photographer. Tom has an eye for expressions of community and the uniqueness of individuals. He highlights the persistence of dignity in people. Tom conveys the humanness of moments in life that are often over-looked and under-awed. For Tom, it takes courage to portray poignancies of living, yet in turn finds fulfillment in opening to a rich depth of life.
    Tom, at the reception for this exhibit, found himself standing upon new ground of acceptance and appreciation. He was recognized by exhibit viewers and peers as a leader, an inspiration for bringing forth one’s beauty and love. Tom’s supervisor at ASSETS, Wayne Haught, commented about his first impression of Tom: “I immediately recognized Tom as compassionate; I felt his genuineness in relating to and caring for people. I wanted him to work for me.” Tom expressed gratitude before all assembled for the event and daring to stand as himself, “I have been able to achieve this because I stand with the community at St. Mary’s Center – in the company of giants.”

Copyright © 2014, 2018 by Susan Werner A social worker and art facilitator, Susan Werner, LCSW,  had worked at St. Mary’s Center in Oakland for 25 years, and she still works there these four years later.