Untitled, number 2 from Hoop Series

Truman Lowe was a Ho-Chunk multimedia artist who emphasized knowledge of his cultural roots, environmental ethics, and natural materials and motifs in his artistic practice. “Hoop Series” comprises four graphite circles, drawn in performative campaigns of successive mark-making. In visual terms, the dramatic works stand out as examples of pure, formal abstraction. The idea for the drawings stemmed from childhood memories of rolling hoops down the dirt roads at the Ho-Chunk Mission where Lowe grew up outside Black River Falls, Wisconsin. Lowe’s propensity for gestural mark-making shines in “Hoops Series,” as each works’ unique expressive facture and oscillating values of black portray the energy and movement of hoops in motion rather than the objects themselves.