This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| A metal smith, Janet Payne Bowles said "the only work that counts is, of course, that which affords one the opportunity for complete and satisfying self expression". (14) However, early in her life she was dedicated to becoming a pianist but changed when she moved to Boston and her uninsured piano was destroyed when the movers attempted to lift it into her top-floor apartment.
She was raised in Indianapolis, Indiana where her father was a supervisor for the post office. In 1890, she graduated from Indianapolis High School where she had been much influenced by the art teacher, Roda Selleck. In 1894, Bowles joined the Portfolio Club, a local art group, and there met her future husband, Joseph Moore Bowles, founder of "Modern Art", a quarterly devoted to the Arts and Crafts Movement that was gaining hold in the United States. The couple married in October 1895, and moved to Massachusetts where to earn money, she began painting illuminations for limited-edition books published by her husband. The earliest work of her career that survives is from this period and is titled "The Second Epistle of John", published in 1901.
Janet Bowles, looking for intellectual challenge, attended classes by psychologist Dr. William James at Radcliff College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. However, she found her niche when she met a young Russian metal smith in the wholesale district of Boston. She began working with him in his shop, but the relationship was jarred when he was thrown in jail and charged with trying to overthrow the U.S. government. Undeterred she continued to learn from him through jail visits and with his permission, took his tools to her apartment where she set up a studio. From that time, her commitment to metalworking was set. She served as an apprentice in a jeweler's shop where she learned stone cutting and metallurgy and also studied design.
For a period her art career became secondary to caring for her children. Daugher Mira was born in 1902 and son, Jan, was born in 1904. The family also moved frequently including to Home Colony, a socialist community established by writer Upton Sinclair near Englewood, New Jersey. This venture ended abruptly when a fire destroyed their apartment building and many of the family's possessions including her original manuscript of a novel she later reconstructed. Published in 1917 with the title "Gossamer to Steel", it had the underlying theme of a woman's struggle between personal freedom and duty.
After the fire, the family settled in 1907 in New York City where Bowles began making jewelry and small metal objects. She gained the attention of influential persons including Sir Caspar Purdon Clarke, Director of the Metropolitan Museum, who placed special orders from her and introduced her to J. Pierpont Morgan, President of the Metropolitan Board of Directors. Morgan was a devotee of ancient metal work and, fascinated by the creative talent of Janet Bowles, commissioned her to do work for his personal collection until his death in 1913. Among the items he ordered were a gold dinner set, spoons, necklaces and rings set with exotic stones. To avoid her making up front financial investments, Morgan furnished the gold and refused to take back any of it that she did not use. During this period, Bowles associated with Arthur Dow, modernist artist and teacher who stressed spontaneity in art and discouraged tight adherence to preparatory compositional sketches.
The year 1909 was a major turning point for Bowles because she received the commission of designing and making the elaborate jewelry of Maude Adams, leading actress in a production of Shakespeare's "As You Like It". In the early 1920s, she entered an international competition in Italy and won a first prize, which led to making chalices "for every Catholic Church in Italy". (18)
As her career took off, her marriage with Joseph Bowles disintegrated. He became addicted to drugs and was unable to support the family. The couple did not divorce, but knowing she had to make a living, she left him and returned with the children to Indianapolis in 1912. She got a position teaching crafts with Roda Selleck, her former art teacher, at Shortridge High School. Within a year of Bowles' employment, the attendance tripled in art-metal classes, which included jewelry making and metalsmithing in gold, silver and copper. She required each student to do fifteen projects, and she created working space for them in a corner of the high-school basement. She encouraged them to form an accord with the metal and not try to dominate the process. Hearkening back to her acceptance of the philosophy of Arthur Dow, he urged her students to forego commitment to preliminary designs and let their creativity flow with the directions they found within their medium. From student descriptions, she is recalled as being calm, highly professional about her subject, encouraging of innovation and usually dressed in a long skirt and white blouse worn with a piece of her hand-made jewelry. In 1929, after the death of Roda Selleck, Janet Bowles took over her pottery classes, and initially learned techniques along with her students. She founded the school organizations of the Workmanship Guild and the Art Appreciation Club.
During her teaching years, Janet Bowles managed to be creative on her own as well. Much of her metal work had symbols reflective of her personal commitment to Christianity. She said: "The universal and the eternal are my favorite and abiding subjects, and I am most conscious of a desire to express them in metal. . . .The design laws of rhythm, balance and harmony I must feel into the work." (21)
In 1925, she was described in the magazine "Art News" as "one of the most creative designers working in America today". That same year, she took a three-month summer visit to Europe as a delegate to the International Exhibit of Decorative Arts in Paris. She also took a philosophy class at the Sorbonne and spent time working with metal smiths in Geneva, Switzerland. During other summer vacations from school, she traveled on the East Coast and to Italy, Russia and South America.
Throughout her creative life, she made relatively little money but made lasting impressions with the quality of her metalwork, the dignity and commitment she brought to her work habits, and her intellectuality much influenced by William James and educator John Dewey.
In 1942, Janet Bowles retired from teaching. She died six years later after a short illness.
Source:
Judith Vale Newton and Carol Ann Weiss, "Skirting the Issue, Stories of Indiana's Historical Women Artists"
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