We are proud to announce that Bly & Rowan Pope have joined the roster of artists at Lowry Hill Gallery. Opening Saturday, May 30 from 5-8pm is a spotlight exhibition consisting of three drawings; a full exhibition of the two artists’ work will be held in September 2028 at Lowry Hill Gallery. The artists will give an artist talk at 4pm on Saturday, June 6, 2026.

Twin brothers Bly and Rowan were raised by parents who are writers and have been creating art together since they were children. Born in California, and raised in the Twin Cities, the Pope brothers graduated from Stanford University and received Master of Fine Arts degrees at the University of Minnesota. Rowan has been an Adjunct Professor for over ten years at University of Minnesota, and has also taught design and color theory classes for eight years at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Likewise, Bly has been an Adjunct Professor for over fifteen years at U of M, and has also taught at MCAD for eleven years.

Together, Bly and Rowan have recently exhibited at Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Burnet Gallery in Wayzata, MN, and Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. Bly’s work is included in the collections of The Cafesjian Museum of Fine Art in Armenia and the Walker Art Center, and many private collectors worldwide. His drawing, “Maryanna,” was selected to be a part of the National Portrait Competition Exhibition at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery throughout 2013-2014 and was purchased by the Minneapolis Institute of Art for their permanent collection in 2017.

Rowan has worked extensively with genocide and Holocaust survivors, and some of his art derives from the devastating real-life stories told by these survivors. He works in an imaginative style of photorealism called “composite photorealism,” in which he integrates photographs into digital collages and transforms those collages into meticulous drawings. In 2013 he created an illustrated book based on the stories of Holocaust survivor Joe Grosnacht, for which he received a Major Arts Grant from Rimon: The Minnesota Jewish Council.

Rowan and Bly are known for their hyper-realist drawings and paintings, using a .5 mm mechanical pencil, sharpened to approximately .1 mm for more meticulous drawings. Of their process, they write:

“We sometimes employ a grid system for the larger drawings, and draw from a printed photograph that is the same size as we want the drawing to be -- which means we may have to cut up the photograph. For both large and small drawings, the process is just a visual translation, looking back and forth between the drawing and the photo. We don't usually use a projector, but have found it's useful for larger pieces.

“To prevent smudging, we work from left to right, in rows, and cover up the finished parts of the drawing with plain paper (taping this protective cover-paper down as we move along). To make extremely realistic drawings, it's usually best to use the entire value spectrum, the whole range of blacks and greys and whites, and keep layering and working into the drawing, over and over. By layering we mean that we finish a certain area, then purposefully blur it with a q-tip, so the darks and lights are greyed out, then go over that layer with a sharpened Tuff Stuff eraser, and again in pencil. Then we repeat the process, over and over. Some of our drawings have over 8-10 “layers” on them.

“Paintings involve the same process of working from a photographic source and the same discipline of layering, except for a lot more mixing to find the correct color before application to the canvas.”