Teacher shares heritage in library art exhibit

Friday, Jul. 28, 2023

SALT LAKE CITY — Vicky Lowe, who teaches art and Spanish at The Madeleine Choir School, “grew up in a community that does a lot of artwork, so it was part of my upbringing,” she said. “I’ve always liked to do it on the side.” 

Lowe has exhibited her work at the Leonardo, Natural History Museum, Utah Museum of Contemporary Arts, at the Centro Cultural Tijuana, Mexico, and many Mexican consulates across the country. Currently, the Childrens Gallery of the Salt Lake Library is highlighting some of her work in an exhibit, “Memories of The Land.” The exhibit runs through Aug. 4.

“It’s about my experience as a member of the Latin American diaspora, where we had to move away because we are trying to have a better future for our children, and how often we’re always thinking about our land and back home, the nostalgia that comes with the memories: the flavors that we miss, the flavors that we taste now and they take us back home,” she said of the exhibit. “It’s also about the stories that come with the food that we sometimes don’t learn about here in the United States, and we have no other way of learning but through our family and our food and recipes.”

Lowe, a native of Chiapas, Mexico, is the daughter of a Maya Tseltal mother and a father who worked in archeology. She received a bachelor’s degree in Spanish with a minor in Latin American Studies from the University of Utah, and a master’s degree in Hispanic and Latin American literature from the University of Barcelona. She immigrated to Utah with her family in 2003. She has taken drawing classes at Salt Lake Community College but is mostly self-taught. She enjoys working with oil, acrylic on canvas and recycled paper; the exhibit has samples of each medium. 

Lowe values this opportunity use her art to share her culture with other people.

“It creates visibility of a culture and identity that is erased,” she said. “They group us into the terms of ‘Hispanics’ and ‘Latinos,’ but do not often talk about how many of us are actually Indigenous and how many of us have different cultures. Even though we share one language in common and maybe a place we come from, that doesn’t mean that we are all the same. They often group us into one, so I think it’s important for people to see that we are different.”

Lowe has been a teacher at The Madeleine Choir School for 10 years. Prior to that, she was a dual immersion teacher in Granite School District and a Spanish teacher at Hawthorne Elementary.

“Vicky Lowe is an educator who prioritizes the whole child,” said Megan Randazzo, a principal at the choir school. “She builds a classroom where all of her learners are seen and respected. She has a gift for integrating cultural experiences and student voice into the classroom environment. I have felt blessed to both work alongside Vicky and have her teach my own two children.”