Natalie Bowman built this prayer box and filled it with religious-themed objects. Photos by Linda Byrne

In a shade-dappled cottage in Grey Forest, sculptor Natalie Bowman transforms found objects –feathers, pieces of glass, sticks – into her signature art. But she’s probably elevated herself into a sculpting league of her own by her admission that even road kill sells.

Bowman once salvaged the bones of animals who had perished, bleached them and placed them in a jar that ended up in one of her “installations”—life-size still lifes that evoke a particular time and place and history.

The jar was displayed in a room in Bowman’s house from which she removed all the furniture. She then created an all-white hospital room evocative of the early 1900s, complete with antique bed holding several dozen white gladiolas, for the Grey Forest Open Studio Tour in 1999.

“The room captured the cycles of life. Everything important happens in the bed,” Bowman said.

Known as “Tita” to her friends, Bowman was born in Mexico and claims Mexican, Jewish, Irish and French roots. Her grandfather worked as a chemist; her father was a mining engineer, working in Mexico’s silver and copper mines. When he was killed in a plane crash when Bowman was 6, she moved with her mother and three siblings to El Paso, where she attended school in a convent until she was 12.

Although Bowman holds an associate’s degree in graphic arts from San Antonio College and a bachelor of fine arts from UTSA in sculpture, her creative bent dates to childhood. 

She said her work is heavily influenced by the symbols and rituals of Catholicism and the creativity unleashed by the complete freedom her mother gave her.

Bowman says when she isn’t working in one of her specialty gardens, she’s creating art inside her cottage.

“When I was in the convent, everything we did was a pageant. We used to have plays at the holidays and we would dress up like angels. Even a spelling bee wouldn’t be just a spelling bee; everybody had uniforms and flags,” she recalled.

One patron describes Bowman’s art as “quirky, mixing a sense of humor with a touch of the macabre.”

She doesn’t dispute the assertion but adds that what she enjoys is juxtaposition, as she did in an award-winning sculpture as a college student that included a bundle of sticks positioned next to an X-ray box depicting the sticks on an X-rays.

Repetitive themes in her work are beads and vessels, liquids in clear glass and creative displays of Mother Nature’s “calling cards” that she finds around her home. “I like people to pick up and touch my art,” she said.

Chris Templeton, who has coordinated past tours, moved to Grey Forest from Florida six years ago. She says Bowman is a terrific neighbor whose “funky” tastes cheer those around her.

“Tita got me settled in, cleaned out my house, blessed all the rooms,” Templeton recalled. “She’s just such a fantastic person. We’ve had so much fun planning this year’s tour. In the past, it seems like we lost the joy. This year it’s back.”

Bowman’s exhibition this year is titled “Arts and Crafts from the Enchanted Cottage,” and features objects made of glass shards, bird nests, sticks, twine, plaster, beeswax, paper, glass vials and jars, bones, dried blossoms and herbs.