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Arts & Entertainment

Daydreams You Can Hold In Your Hands

Christopher Low's tiny creations are a marriage of garage sale treasures and the imagination

An old paperback book, worn wooden toys in the shape of a barn and a dog with a missing leg might not inspire everyone. For Petaluma artist Christopher Low – it’s magic.

Low haunts antique stores, thrift shops and “good” junk sales scanning for the rarest of items  - tiny toys from the 1800s or early 1900s that have managed to keep their heads.

“I can’t resist Victorian toys and toys right up to the 1920’s made from celluloid. Old tin toys. Anything small, anything highly detailed. I go back and forth between loving clumsy folk art American toys, then loving German precision made items,” he said.

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Low, 51, has a “real” job in addition to being an artist. He’s not a waiter/artist or actor/artist. By day, he's the Senior Director, Facilities & Life Support Systems at Aquarium of the Bay in charge of physical aspects of the building and systems at the aquarium on Beach Street in San Francisco. 

Nights and weekends are spent on his assemblage art.

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Early in his art career Low created illustrations for a small newspaper and trained at , completing the two-year applied graphics program. He grew up in Marin and settled in Petaluma after service in the Coast Guard.  

“I don’t have a studio or a room devoted to this," Low said. "I have part of a kitchen counter – if the kitchen is cleaned up. I don’t have a lot of space. It’s probably why most of my pieces are small,” he said.

Low's work has been included in several art gallery shows. Owner Drew Washer-Haye includes Low because she finds his pieces striking...in a warm, homey kind of way.

“Chris has been in numerous group shows over past ten years and had solo show or two. His work is steeped in sweet authenticity with carefully chosen parts to make a whole,” said Washer-Haye. “It conjures up past moments of the viewers life or so it seems in a sort of a déjà vu effect. You can’t help but respond to his work in a heartfelt way.”

Low has a booth at the spring and fall  fair, is a regular participant in the Altered Book Show in Marin, has displayed his work at  (in the Lynch Building) and currently offers a sampling of works at Chateau Sonoma, which hosts the French Flea Market each summer. With pieces running from $50 to $200, Low often negotiates lower prices if he sees someone falling in love with an object he’s created.

“I’m not very computer literate and I’m the only person in my family that doesn’t use etsy.com. I don't have a website or anything. I prefer to set up shop and talk to people and see what they think,” he said.

It takes a certain type of personality to withstand a full day of potential collectors hitting your table cold. Low relishes the interaction. He doesn’t mind when people think of his work as “toys” or if they scold him for “ruining” rare vintage items by gluing them into old cigar boxes.

“For me, it’s play. My work is a starting point for your imagination. I don’t want to take it too seriously and I don’t want to ruin the experience. I’m sending a little art ship out there into the universe,” he said implying that it will either sink or swim on its own merits or the value the buyer bestows upon it.

Last year I finally bought a Low for just $20. Now, I realize he saw that I loved it. It’s the tiny book, barn, and dog tableau. I have an ongoing storyline in my mind for Ulysses the tripod dog, who left the farm to join the travelling circus. His story illustrates the power of Christopher Low’s art to inspire daydreams.

To my mind, Ulysses was never part of a circus dog act. That was beneath him. That’s for poodles.

I imagine him in charge of returning lost children to their parents. Holding the child’s coat hem gently in his mouth he’d cock his ear to zero-in on the cries of the panicked mother. You might think he lost his forepaw while trying to hop a train with a band of hoboes, but no, it actually occurred during a fight following an all-night big bone stakes poker game.

Ulysses always dreamed of returning to the chicken ranch and his beloved barn with the soft bed of hay. Sadly, by the time he limped home from his adventures the barn had shrunk to the size of a board game token. Or had he grown larger?

I often wonder what will happen to Ulysses next.

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