Photo by Prez Creative Assignments (PCA)
Cybele Rowe
Hundreds of inspiring large- and small-scale sculptures dot the two and a half acres of Cybele Rowe’s property near Joshua Tree. The ceramics, concrete, bronze and wood stand among the cactus, shrubs and Joshua trees, creating a unique visual experience across the desert landscape.
Her newest piece, standing in her backyard, is a massive white bull. Rowe says it’s filled with the emotions that she’s currently experiencing: “How I feel; living, breathing, smelling, touching, all the senses; sadness, happiness,” she says. “I am the inner landscape and it comes out.”
Rancho Mirage resident Douglas Moreland purchased Rowe’s concrete sculpture called Creation, and displays it in his front yard. Moreland says, “I ask everyone when they first come to my front door what they see. Everyone sees something different; sometimes a face or a serpent. But by the time they walk around the abstract sculpture, they all see two people embracing. It’s exciting how their perceptions change as they move around.”
Moreland also sees an aboriginal influence in Rowe’s works, noting that she was born in Australia. “The size and strength of her sculptures are exotic,” he says, “which she can accomplish because she’s working in lightweight concrete – it gives her the ability to change forms.”
Palm Spring resident Hugh Glenn, who owns two ceramic pieces by Rowe, describes her works as bold and powerful. “Her colors are fantastic. My pieces have different colors on the front and back,” he says.
Two of Rowe’s larger ceramic sculptures stand in front of the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona. Her work has been displayed in the World Bank, the Kennedy Center and Smithsonian. Will Smith and Halle Berry collect her work, and she was named one of the “Most Influential People” in the Orange County Weekly Magazine in 2015.
Rowe was born in Sydney, Australia. Growing up, she moved with her father, a pediatric geneticist researcher and her mother, a documentary filmmaker, to Durham, North Carolina, then back to Sydney. She got both her Bachelor of the Arts and postgraduate degree in Professional Art Studies from the University of New South Wales. Then Rowe was awarded a grant from the Australian government, which landed her in New York in 1990, where she had a studio until 1998.
Some of her teachers didn’t recognize her as an artist when she began to create at the age of 17. “I was not seen as a talent in art growing up,” she says. “I made my own way of seeing. I just had, and still have, an intense love of form and the stories it can hold.”
Her family also provided her with a support system. “We had to work hard, go to college and be motivated,” she said. “I’m self-motivated in everything because it comes from within, not from outside.”
The 58-year-old divorcee has two children, Galatea, 16, and Zak, 23. She moved to the desert in 2016, and in 2019 bought a home at Landers in the high desert. “This is a place that’s got a pulse,” she says. “I first came to Joshua Tree National Park as a sculptor years ago. It was the most beautiful place I had ever seen in my life. I knew I would be inspired here as a sculptor.”
The prolific Rowe gets up at half past four every morning to work on her pieces, and the creative process doesn’t stop even while she is asleep. At night she dreams of visions of new forms to create. “I have a form vision, a dreamscape. My hands and fingers do the stories. I don’t know where it’s coming from, but it’s coming to me and I start doing it.” She compares the process to the workings of intelligent octopuses with their three hearts, blue blood, and eight brains, one in each of their tentacles, and that everything moves up to the central ninth brain in their head.
This analogy is perhaps inspired by her love of scuba diving. She claims this pastime has given her the ability to work in the round and upside down. “I developed a system that allowed me to work from all sides and angles...upside down was now possible,” she explains.
Rowe has learned the skills to become the talented sculptor she is today. She works on three pieces at once, and draws abstracts on paper to loosen up her hands and mind, depending on the material. “Then I carve or coil the form, I look at a color palette. If it’s clay, I use glaze and put it in a kiln where it becomes ceramic. If it's concrete I use enamels and it dries naturally, and for bronze I use a cauldron. I cast my own bronzes.”
She emphasizes that sculpting takes a lot of patience and making mistakes. In fact, in 2008 she left the art scene for a while, so she could make mistakes without the pressure of producing repetitive works to sell. “I wanted to be able to make ugly work to find beauty.”
“It’s been 40 years of material exploration,” she says. “It really is now a decision of what material would have the best ‘language’ to express the work.”
Willing to work in whatever material inspires her, ceramics are still her greatest love. “It's the Empyrean place from which it is created, made real by the trial of fire,” she said. “The color, magic and final say of the kiln determines whether the work is a success or a failure. And that releases me as the artist/maker … I do believe I understand the curve and color as this is the sole lesson of making vessels, and I have made thousands.”
She also works in bronze, after falling in love with the process, and taught bronze at Saddleback College.
Describing her creative process, she says, “The first factor is the material being used; the ecosystem of my studio. The second is my emotional state. I do not walk into my studio or out into my sculpture garden feeling ethereal and powerful. I enter my workspace not knowing if the day and work I create will be successful or a complete disaster. The one thing that is guaranteed is that if I enter my space to work and do the work, that work will be created in my space and then into its own space.”
She is also an avid reader and researcher, letting her varied knowledge base influence her. “The works are a reflection of my learning. I am autodidactic in my research of all things that interest me,” she explains.
Rowe gives greatest value to the compliments on her work when they come from her buyers. She says, “Those are gold.”
She is on track to make her best works and is still evolving in her pieces. “I still want to keep growing until I pop off.”
Cybele Rowe is currently represented by Melissa Morgan Fine Art, Palm Desert, where some of her sculptures are currently on exhibition.
