0.8 Lowell collins, 1924-2003

Remembered by his son, Michael R. Collins

Beginnings

He was born in San Antonio, and along with my grandmother and grandfather came to Houston as a very young boy. His grandfather—my great-grandfather—could draw ambidextrously, so I think the facility was possibly genetic; he saw his grandfather at an early age make drawings. My great-grandfather was Roque George, which is my middle name: Michael Roque Collins. I was named after him. And he would say, “Lowell, come over here; sit by me. I want to show you some things.” So they would draw. After he showed some early ability, some of the first things that I recall being told that he drew, were that he colored in his Grimms’ Fairy Tales, which I happen to have. After that he had an interest in cartooning, and shortly thereafter he started carving objects when he was in middle school, let’s say, when he got his first pocket knife. After all of this evidence, my grandmother placed him at the Glassell School (formerly the Houston Museum School) when he was very, very young.

When the war happened he waited to be drafted—actually waited for his number to be called for training. He went to the Clayton Air School and he was getting his wings, ready to serve and probably be shipped overseas, when an inner ear problem grounded him. So he spent the war in Colorado Springs after a long stint in the hospital. But after this the Air Force based him in Colorado Springs, where he was fortunate to sign up with the Colorado School of Arts and Design. [There] he met Otis Dozier and had some experience with Otis’ friend, Thomas Hart Benton. I think that he did this for two or three years as a scholarship student. I also believe he made contact with Robert Preusser who was an early influence on him. At some point after the war was over he came to Houston, but immediately went up [to New York]to the Art Students’ League, where he met Edsel Cramer, a fellow student. Then he gets this cable, this wire that he was offered a position to teach at the Houston Museum School. I remember he told me Edsel was laughing and ribbing him: “If you have a job, you don’t need to be a student. Go and teach.”

So when he moved back from New York he became very close to my godparents, Ruth Uhler and James Chillman. I remember from my father’s stories and their stories to me their both saying to him that he needed to take lessons—that he needed to study with people like Robert Joy; to take the experiences from Preusser and Otis Dozier and Benton and turn that into a degree or two. So he went into the University of Houston where he had a tremendous portfolio already; he got his undergraduate degree, I believe in short order, then he went through the MLA program. He was continuing at that time as an instructor at the Museum School, and he actually became an instructor—an adjunct professor—in studio art at U of H, and an adjunct professor at Rice, teaching art for architects. He met my mother as he was a teacher at the University of Houston; she was a student there studying art. I guess after the MLA was completed he then started seriously as an instructor at the Museum School and at some point in an 11-year period was named dean under Sweeney’s regime at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts.