Becca Lowry

“She was the Angelina Jolie of wolves.” So said one of Yellowstone’s biologists of the gray wolf they called the ’06 Female, to whom Becca Lowry dedicated RIP 06 (all works 2014), one of the six sculptural pieces exhibited in her first solo show. In a series of carvings, Lowry trenched and scored the work with an angle grinder, a skill saw, chisels, and, eventually, a rasp; inlaid it with steel; spray- and handpainted it; and, finally, scraped it with a razor. RIP 06’s most delicate element—a vertebraic column down its middle—serves as its center of gravity. Winglike panels extend from the spine like leaves of a book catching a draft of air, while the fringed rectrices of the wall-mounted work’s lower anatomy dangle below them.This centrifugal movement transfixes, like a starburst. The ’06 Female (the wolf), too, seemed to transfix and transform all who saw her. She was