A massive orange canvas is perched on an easel in artist Judy Bowman's basement studio in Romulus as her latest collage takes shape — one piece of paper at a time.

Scraps are scattered around the easel's base on the floor while a photograph of several men — two of Bowman's brothers, some cousins and a nephew — is taped to the canvas. Bowman, who just started making collages six years ago, uses all different shades of a special kind of decorative paper to create their faces and torsos. One cousin, Red, known for his dapper style, has gold paper for his glasses. Noses jut from the canvas.

"I like my work to be three-dimensional," said Bowman, who just turned 70 this week, standing near the easel. "Depending on where the light hits, it changes the picture."

After nearly 30 years in education, Bowman is blazing a new career path, this time as a collage artist. Her work is just about everywhere these days: in the Detroit Institute of Arts' collection, on digital billboards downtown and as part of an auction next month at the Detroit Artists Market.

She won a Kresge Artist Fellowship in 2021 and a local Alain Locke Recognition Art Award earlier this spring. And in October, she'll have a solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.

"All of this has happened in such a short time," she marvels.

Bowman said she never anticipated her work would take off the way it has, but she believes people are drawn to it because there's an emotional connection.

"I believe that people are attracted to the colors, textures, but also the themes and messages — of family, of community, of relationships, of support," she said. "...All people love. All people have a mother. All people have fond memories of how they grew up, or not so fond memories."

Family and celebrating the Black experience are inspiration for Bowman, who retired from education in 2009. She's crafted detailed collages of the home where she grew up on Seneca Street in Detroit, her mother, Minnie Mae Matthews, and, of course, the rest of her family. 

"Red is in a lot," said Bowman, who remembers going with her cousin to an art show to sell her work and he was so dapper that everyone thought he was the artist, not her. "....The men, in my life, this is how they dressed. I do a lot of family stuff."

What makes Bowman's collages stand out is their incredible level of detail and color. She uses a type of handmade, decorative paper called Lokta in a range of bold hues and patterns. Her collage of her childhood home on Detroit's east side is so intricate it even depicts the art that hung on the walls, miniature photos of family and her dog.

Her collages turn the ordinary into something extraordinary.

“Judy’s colorful figurative collages focus on aspects of everyday Black life in Detroit," said Valerie Mercer, department head and curator of the DIA's Center for African American Art. "They also reflect her memories of growing up in the city's east side and Black Bottom communities, her family's life, and the friends they loved. Through her use of various kinds of paper with different textures, she consistently depicts a range of subjects that evoke the joy and strength of Black people in Detroit.”

Matt Fry, director of the Detroit Artists Market, calls Bowman "a flat out fantastic artist." He recalls a show at the gallery where Bowman exhibited a piece called "Hanging out on Lafayette and McDougall" that depicted her mom and aunts "dressed to the nines."

"It really takes you back to the 1960s Black Bottom Neighborhood," he said.

Ultimately, Bowman's collages are about storytelling. In fact, she describes herself a visual "griot," a type of West African historian or storyteller. She said her work is a way of reclaiming the narrative of the Black community, who too often are depicted in "negative, marginalized" ways. 

"I want to tell the story," said Bowman. "...I am seeing it the way it is for a lot of people — maybe not for all people. But for a lot of the Black community. And I think that’s very, very important for a member of the community to tell the narrative rather than something coming in from the outside."

Not that her work is only for the Black community. It isn't. She recalls being at ArtPrize in Grand Rapids a few years ago where she displayed a very large two-dimensional collage, "The Lovers," that depicts two couples intertwined in different ways.

"I'd see couples and they'd start hanging on each other" after seeing it, remembers Bowman. "...It doesn't matter if you're Black, or White, or Indian. You still have these emotions and attachments. And I think that's what people see in my work."

For decades, Bowman had to put her art aside. She was always drawn to art as a child and studied it initially as a student at Clark Atlanta University (though her art classes were offered at Spelman College) but she left Clark after three years.

She later married and she and her husband moved to Flint. It was there that she eventually finished her degree at the University of Michigan-Flint. But there was no art program, so she got a bachelor's degree in general studies and got into education.

"Everything was just pieced together," she remembers.

She taught in Flint and Battle Creek, spending 27 years in education before retiring as principal of the Detroit Academy of Arts and Sciences. But there wasn't time to create art on the side. A mom to 10, there were meals to be cooked, assignments to be graded and a family to tend. Art would have to wait.

Finally, in retirement, Bowman returned to her passion. She'd always done pastels in the past but wanted to do something bigger, so she decided to try collages. Years of creating school bulletin boards had served her well.

"I had some nice bulletin boards, some really great bulletin boards," she said with a laugh. "...I was training. I just didn’t realize I was training for this."

Her collages start organically with a thought and then "it just comes," she said. She said her husband has threatened to clean up her scraps of paper on the floor in her studio but she tells him to not touch anything. The scraps might include exactly what she needs.

"I look on the floor and I'll find just the piece I need," she said. "It'll jump out."

Lokta is a type handmade paper made from a Lokta bush or Daphne bush that grows in the Himalayan Mountains. Thick and textured, dozens if not hundreds of different shades of it are stacked together on a rack in Bowman's studio.

"What drew me to Lokta paper is the vibrant colors, textures, and it is a sturdy hand made paper," said Bowman. "Each sheet has own unique texture and has a slightly different shade in its coloring on the front and back side of each sheet because it is hand made. It cuts (and) tears well. And it doesn't change its texture when adhesive is applied to it."

Even as Bowman's art career has taken off, it hasn't been without a little help.

She said the Detroit Fine Arts Breakfast Club — a weekly gathering of artists who come together to share and sell their work founded by Henry Harper and Harold Braggs — has played a big role in helping her get started, connecting her with the right people and other artists. Legendary Detroit artists such as Shirley Woodson also helped.

Bowman remembers complaining once about all that she had so much to accomplish even though she'd started her art career so late. Then she remembered all the artists in their 80s or older who've continue to make strides in Detroit.

For as long as she can keep creating her collages, "I’m going to rock it," she said. "I’m going to do it until I can’t do it anymore."

And her advice to any new artist regardless of age or experience? Follow that passion, she said.

"Don’t worry that you’re not good enough. That you’re too old. That gift was put inside of you for a reason," she said. "Follow that passion. No matter how old, how young, how inexperienced you are. And it will flourish."