Shelley Lowenstein

Jen MacDonald: Can you tell me about yourself? (Education, previous works, interests...)

Shelley Lowenstein: I realized in the 5th grade that I learned better watching movies and TV than by reading, and so I am a visual learner and it was really important for me to pursue that in my work. I went to Boston University for college and got a double major in English and secondary education. That allowed me to teach but I did not want to teach. I moved to New York and after a lot of trial and error, I started to work with film strip and recording. Then I moved to D.C because I got a job at experimental high school for the deaf, and became an educational tech and curriculum designer which is exactly what I wanted to do.

I worked on films, TV, CD rom, interactive disc, and web educational internet games. At some point, I started to paint. I started to tell stories with my figures and did it for a long time, and realized I am a storyteller which is consistent with what I did. After finding out my daughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, I wanted to share the story of the beta cell. I started to do abstract work after talking to scientists around the country and around the world. I am shifting back and forth with figures and beta cells.

I feel like my work with the beta cells speak to people who live with the disease and speaks to the people beyond because it is an autoimmune disease. These days, I have been working all day on figures because I miss them so much. German artist, Hart Rickdard, does photorealism, drawings, and paintings but then went way into the abstract world. If it is okay for him, I believe it is okay for me to change as well.

MacDonald: With your work with beta cells, there is a strong sense of colors. It is interesting because most cells are stained with fluorescent purples, blues, or greens. Do you take into consideration certain color schemes?

Lowenstein: No specific color scheme. They are just very colorful and are intentionally colorful. It is a “beta celebration” because that is how I feel about them. It is remarkable that they are so important and the hardest working cells in the body yet, they are only a few of them. The beta cells, they get stressed.

Like the scene in I Love Lucy, Lucy and Ethel worked in a candy factory and the candy comes out of the conveyor belt. Because the conveyor moves faster than they can, everything goes wrong. This is just like the beta cells. When they are under the wrong environment, they start misprinting because they get stressed and autoimmune diseases start duplicating them wrong. We have so few of these cells and they are so important to life and I do not want to take them for granted.

MacDonald: With your beta cell work, I’ve seen ink and salt, ink on paper, ink on clay board, and bottle caps to portray beta cells. Can you talk about the different mediums you used and the reasons why you used those mediums?

Lowenstein: I cannot find at this time an image that are “wow, this will explain everything”. In talking to scientists, I find that they, in my opinion, put too much jargon when describing the beta cells. When I ask them for adjectives or ask “Do they have a color? What do the surfaces look like? What does the interior look like?” they talk to me with scientist words. Talk to me like I am a 5 year old and describe them to me. How will I portray them in a colorful, hopeful, and optimistic way?

I started with dark color schemes, and had a negative impact on a person who actually had type 1 diabetes. I did not want to talk about the dying of the beta cell but the living of the beta cell. There is a possibility to fix this disease in the future. I make intentional decisions to make them more accessible. With my opening event for the beta cells, I had two scientists from Harvard who came with their grandchildren. I explained it to the children, and it was easy for them to understand. The grandparent are scholars but they get caught up in the technical aspects of the beta cells, making it harder for the children, and even grown adults to understand them.

MacDonald: In your previous works with painting scenes with people, what about that scene makes you want to paint it? Is there a theme, feeling, or experience that provokes your desire to paint the scene?

Lowenstein: I’ll see something and a lot of time, it does not have to do with the figures. It has to do with light and shadow. It is more about the environment of light and shadows. I also like what the figures are doing so I will frame it and take pictures of it. Then I would paint it. My paintings are never as it was in real life. It tells a story that I want to tell in a situation.

MacDonald: What is a memorable event in your life that makes you proud of what you do?

Lowenstein: One Harvard researcher from the Joslin Diabetes Center, brought one of my work, and hung it in her lab because she wanted people to see it and get inspired by it. When you see a visual, you start thinking about it in different ways. My beta cells represent the labor of love. I would have never known about the beta cells if it weren’t for my daughter.

I am on this mission to make beta cells a household word. I want them to celebrate it because it is so cool and amazing and it has intelligence because it knows exactly how much insulin to produce to offset the sugar in our body. The insulin which has so much credibility is just a hormone to open the cell. But it is the beta cell that is the brain of the operation. There is a big push to incorporate science in art.

There is one story I really want to tell. After my opening show, I was invited to a beta cell emporium to speak to scientists around the world. I prepared a speech and power point and got into a room. It was a cocktail hour event with people just standing around. So I wanted to start my speech and told them “Well I am starting now, could you just listen so I can show you what I have done.'' This one Australian guy who was tall and lanky, he came up to me and said in all his professional life, he had an image in his head about the beta cells and that I have painted what he imagined. This was the best thing anyone said to me. The fact that he could visualize what he saw in his profession was the highest compliment.

MacDonald: What kind of advice can you give to people who are afraid to pursue the arts or who are currently pursuing the arts?

Lowenstein: To do it with your heart and soul. It is not easy making a living doing art. Just do it now and you never know where it will take you. Just do it. Keep working. Just keep working, working, and working even if the voices say you are no good or you do not know what you are doing. Just keep continuing. We are all floating in this world. If one door closes, other doors open. Another good advice is to step away from your work from time to time and just allow yourself to play and experiment.