Janice Lowry papers, 1957-2009

There are 126 "art journals" created by Janice Lowry between 1973 and 2009 and three abandoned journals. She kept journals for most of her adult life, averaging about four per year. They include written text and visual imagery in the form of sketches, paintings, and collage in widely varied mediums. She glued in some of her children's artwork, and let them draw directly in her journals. She added slips of loose papers with notes, phone numbers, studies, plans, diagrams, and pockets of loose papers, letters, photographs, and objects. Some pages are collaged with ephemera such as ticket stubs, pictures, newspaper clippings, receipts, appointment cards, IDs, comics, cards, maps, and bills. Inserted are many articles about crime, politics, and death, as well as newspaper adverts for art shows. She often included definitions, quotes, things she had recently learned, and notes for lesson plans. Other objects and materials were used in the artwork, such as fabric, graph paper, sewing patterns, measuring tape, string, stickers, glitter, tape, stamps, and pieces cut out of a dictionary. She also included dried flowers, butterfly wings, leaves, and seeds. Topics include travel, thoughts, lists, dreams, finances, critiques, correspondence, timelines, and her relationship with her mother. Lowry also created storyboard journal entries, combining small, square sketches with commentary.

Janice Lowry wrote and illustrated the many handmade books found among her papers. These include comic book stories about her family, collage booklets, and children's books. Some are photocopied and bound. Both "The Cat and the Fiddle" and an untitled 1988 book combine the lyrics of a well-known song and photocopied and hand-colored magazine collages. A few of the books are comic books about her life, including a series called "Family Tales." Files include photocopied printed versions as well as some of the original artwork.

The notebooks in this series date mostly from Lowry's student days at the Art Center College of Design and date from 1976 to 1979. These early notebooks contain notes from her classes and sketches. There are also four notebooks containing autobiographical essays about her life and family and one sketchbook of figure drawings from the 2000s.