Sculptor Mike Fowle featured in travelling art exhibit

Mike Fowle likes the outdoors, creating things with his hands, usually out of found pieces of metal, old farm equipment parts and other materials and recycling them into art.

Fowle said his interest in such art, although not realized then, started with his father and grandfather, who were farmers. He said they were farmers who did all of their own repairs because there was little money to purchase new equipment and welding was something he learned from them. Even back then watching them weld farm equipment back together, he would look at the broken parts in a different light. Fowle said he has always looked at parts and pieces of equipment with a slightly different eye, seeing something creative and different in them.

It wouldn’t be until much later that he would actually begin making pieces of art out of the images he saw in them.

“I combine old farm implements and recycle them into art,” he said.

This year his artistic abilities were recognized statewide. One of his sculptures was accepted in the Palmetto Hands Juried Competition, an exhibition of the South Caro-lina Artists North Charleston’s Cultural Arts Department. A selection of winning entries from the 2008 South Carolina Palmetto Hands Fine Craft Exhibition is on display as a traveling “mini-exhibit” at the South Carolina State Museum.
Organized and presented by the City of North Charleston’s Cultural Arts Department, the South Carolina Palmetto Hands Fine Craft Exhibition is a component of the North Charleston Arts Festival. More than 100 entries were submitted for the exhibition. The works created for the exhibit were done in fiber, wood, clay, metal, glass and mixed media and 3D mixed media and glass.

The state museum’s “mini-exhibit” contains 11 of the final works selected for the traveling show and is on view at the South Carolina State Museum through Jan. 15.

The exhibit offers a unique opportunity to showcase fine craft artisans from across the state.

Fowle, a contemporary visual artist working in multiple 2D and 3D mediums, said for much of his life in Hartsville, he has been known as Patz Fowle’s husband. Patz is an established artist with a most creative bent. She makes fascinating critters out of clay, is an artist and an author.

Mike is the first in the family to make it in the state museum.

“I never thought it would be me,” Mike said. “She is happy for me. She is so amazing at putting things together and being creative.”
Patz did the traveling exhibit in 2007, and Mike did it in 2008.

Mike said Patz has made a living out of her art. In 1974 they lived in New York and went to art shows to exhibit her clay creations.
“I would do the manual work,” Mike said.

He said she was selling so many things at festivals and shows that it was difficult to keep up.

“I helped her and that is where it all started,” said Mike who has lived in Hartsville for the past 23 years.

While Patz’s eye has been primarily on clay sculptures, Mike’s has been on metal sculptures although he has started to do oil painting.
He said his method is very different and somewhat like the way he approaches his sculpture. He throws the paint on canvass and takes a rock and scrapes through it.

In 2004, he started selling his own work.

Only recently have they started to collaborate on sculpture.

“We are both busy,” Mike said. “We are doing a few large sculptures together.”

Mike is an approved artist for the South Carolina Arts Commission and goes into the schools teaching the Patz process.
“I can bring the real Patz Fowle with me,” Mike said.

Mike is also good at carpentry, and he built an art studio for his wife many years ago. It is in that studio where he creates art for public and private collections, too, but much of his work is done outside in the elements.

Mike jokingly said she gives him a little loft space in which to work, and hopefully it won’t be long before he builds himself a studio so they wont have to share a space.

Mike also makes a lot of museum quality displays for sale.

“It helps me pay the bills,” he said.

Fowle is an active member of the Sumter Artists Guild, the Florence Visual Arts Guild and a Lifetime member of the Florence Museum.
Mike Fowle began art studies with Ceramics instructor Yosuke Haruta, with an emphasis in traditional wheel thrown pottery and glaze calculation at Jackson College, Jackson, Michigan in 1979.

For International Profes-sional Development in 2005 Patz Fowle traveled to Tokyo, Japan where they enjoyed the experience of staying in a traditional Japanese home. While in Japan Mike visited and studied the peoples and cultures of urban and rural Japan. Visits included excursions to the Historic Pottery village of Mashiko, Japan where Mike researched traditional Japan-ese Potteries in 2005. Mike Fowle assisted Patz Fowle in an International Artist-in-Resi-dence at the American School in Japan in Nomizu Chofu-Shi, Tokyo, Japan in 2005
In 2008 Fowle was commissioned to create a permanent wall installation sculpture commemorating the Environ-mental Discovery Center at the Lynches River County Park in South Carolina. He also has a piece of metal sculpture in the Palmetto Hands 2008-2009 Traveling Exhibition sponsored by the South Carolina State Museum.

Other recent exhibitions include the 55th Pee Dee Regional Art Exhibition/ Competition at the Florence Museum in 2008, Sumter Invitational Group Exhibition at the Sumter Gallery of Art in 2008 and Artsfest Annual Juried Art Competition/Exhibition in Florence in 2008.
Mike’s work was also a part of an exhibit at the Black Creek Arts Center Gallery called “A Family of Artists” with Mike and Patz Fowle and their daughter Michelle Morris.

His work also includes permanent public art at Lynches River County Park Environ-mental Discovery Center; public art, Carolina CarTrek Picarso Hartsville Museum Sculpture Garden 2007; public art, Mantis, Florence Museum Sculpture Yard 2006; public art commission, Picasso meets Pee-Wee, Florence Museum Pottery Studio Entrance Gate 2006; Fifty-Third Annual Juried Pee Dee Regional Art Competition, Florence, in 2006; and Fifty-First Annual Juried Pee Dee Regional Art Competition, Florence, in 2004.