I’m grieving tonight, raccoon eyed and sobbing at the computer screen because Steve Lowe has died. For those who aren’t aware of the intense, caramel-eyed, passionate owner of both the Beat Hotel and the Lautner Hotel in Desert Hot Springs, he was a force to be reckoned with; a man who spent his whole life trying to make sure the world was aware of important art.
The premise of his Beat Hotel was to showcase the myriad of prismatic influence that the Beat Generation lent upon living for the day and living each moment with the pursuance of dreams. The hotel’s whole purpose was to give modern creatives a pit stop of silence, white walls, and windmills in the distance where they could find the fruition of their own inspiration in a blank white space. The hotel was filled with William Burroughs archives of writing, important literature from the genre and pieces of art that were priceless in their random oneness; all things that Steve inherited after twenty years of being Burroughs’ assistant. One of the most intriguing pieces was a video in the lobby of an old William Burroughs wearing a tattered brown suit, holding a shotgun outside on a Santa Fe morning, shooting paint cans to bits in order to create a work of splattered art on the board. The exploded paint cans that sat in a glass case were remnants of that video and of Steve’s keen eye for collecting. Another great piece was the handmade book that Steve had produced with prolific artist Richard Tuttle for Tuttle’s very first show in America; a show that Steve hosted in his Santa Fe gallery that scared the city out of its refried bean and turquoise painted pants.
Steve used to joke that he was a Mennonite geisha, running around the grounds of the Beat Hotel fluffing the sheets, putting out the wine, dining guests’ eyes on a body of work that fueled a spirit Steve never wanted the world to lose.
And people flocked to his last art project from all over the world. I was lucky enough to be one of them. Every time I would travel up the long and dusty Desert Hot Springs roads to find Steve on a Sunday afternoon I would say in my usual busy fashion, “I only have an hour”. It would invariably turn into a non-stop four hour-long conversation in a vivid stream of consciousness.
It became my solace; my own nostalgic haven to recall my own past and the many years I spent biking those same dusty streets as a schoolgirl with my own battered copies of pilfered Beat Literature under my armpit as the desert winds whipped my wheels forward.
It became a place for me where magic happened. I would arrive, never knowing who would be visiting and oftentimes, I would find myself co-mingling with the other guests who tended to come out of their rooms near the pool to be close to Steve’s frenetic energy. I have many happy memories there: dangling my feet in the Jacuzzi while reading a copy of Ginsberg’s HOWL aloud to Canadian artist Kevin House; drinking red wine and playing the tambourine with Steve after a successful art party; partaking in an impromptu reading with the poet Max Blagg from New York; watching Get Stoned German artist Hans Blechner strip down to nothing but a suitcase and yell about being free; listening to Grant Hart from the old band Hüsker Dü deliver a sample of his new poetry on an old microphone; talking till midnight with poetess Iris Berry about the loss of Los Angeles’ underground punk scene; and the list goes on and on.
Steve was truly a conduit of the electrical artistic life; a beacon to everything the creative heart stands for. Last Friday, I received a call from Steve. He was wildly ranting on the phone about how I just HAD to come up on Sunday to see him. He had received exciting news, he learned he had inherited the Burroughs house in the Midwest and he was already starting to formulate plans about possibly turning the residence into a writer’s estate. He wanted my advice and it was urgent, like everything else Steve put his mind to. I called him on Sunday morning and found myself faced with a full voice mail, a strange thing for a man who answered every phone call. When I found out he had passed I was devastated. Not only did I lose a friend, but also I feel like a piece of my heart left this earth.
Within hours I had emails from around the world from fellow artists and writers who all felt the same sense of loss. I suddenly realized that, just like with me, Steve had made an incredible impact on the entire world. The man, who spent his life trying to showcase others, was finally being recognized as the true angel he was. Along with the extreme sadness that accompanies such a loss to this world, I also feel grief for the work he created, and hope, like all else who loved him, that everything he’s done will not be for naught, and that somehow his own inheritors will make a mission to make sure the beat goes on!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Kimberley Nichols is an artist and writer. She is the author of the excellent Mad Anatomy short-story collection. Visit the old Diary of a Californicator archive (2001-03).
