Cybele Rowe

Cybele Rowe was born in Sydney, Australia. After graduating with degrees in sculpture and painting, she relocated to New York City at age 24. Pursuing both ceramics and painting, she was featured in Bergdorf Goodman, the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and The Kennedy Center, and she lectured on her work for the Smithsonian. Her exhibition schedule has remained rigorous for 40 years, during which she has worked daily in multiple media.

After the birth of her first son, Rowe moved to Southern California, where she now resides in a small unincorporated town in Orange County and in the High Desert.

All of Rowe’s movements over the surface of a work—whether by hand, tool, or paintbrush—are made in real time through an active dialogue with the medium. Whether created for a thermal body within a kiln, the poured surface of bronzes, forms carved from wood or cast in concrete, or expressed through paintings or tuftings, each work contains countless mistakes that accumulate as she coaxes it toward completion. These actions can result in unexpected triumphs or complete disasters. Yet the mistakes are never in vain; they are constant teachers in the ongoing dialogue of making, and that is where the art lies for her. Rowe’s works, like the artist herself, are never perfect—and are not meant to be.