Originally from Mansfield, Ohio, Glenn E. Bowen graduated from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh (October 1948) and The Cleveland Institute of Art (May 1951). During his years in art school, he supplemented his income by painting signs and designing menus for bars and restaurants in Pittsburg, PA, and Mansfield and Cleveland, OH. A longtime member of the Cleveland Society of Artists, he also served as resident caretaker and curator/preparator of their gallery and shared studio space in a century home on Mistletoe Drive across from the Music School Settlement, where he lived with his family from 1954 to 1958.
A painter, sculptor, and printmaker, Bowen was a friend and contemporary of multiple Cleveland School Artists, such as George Adomeit, Robert Carroll, Peter Paul Dubaniewicz, Carl Gaertner, and Walter Sinz, whose work became part of his private collection. Bowen’s work appeared in various gallery shows in Cleveland and Mansfield during the 1950s and 60s. In the mid-1960s, he began an ongoing collaboration with Aldersgate United Methodist Church and the Inner-City Protestant Parish that included secular and liturgical paintings, sculptures, collages, and large- scale installation pieces for churches throughout the greater Cleveland area.
Bowen was also a well-respected professional Interior Designer, working as an Associate at Holzheimer’s Interiors, as a Partner at Howard L. Pim Associates, Director of Design for John P. Sedlak Interiors, and Principal of Glenn E. Bowen Interiors. He was a lifelong American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) member and served in various capacities, including Treasurer and Vice President of the Board. In addition to commercial and residential work throughout Ohio, he also designed homes and condominiums in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, and South Carolina. He was also a prolific landscape designer, incorporating wooden carvings, cast cement sculptures, hand-built stone fountains and found object installations into custom horticultural projects.
In 1987, in partnership with his son, Steven A. Bowen (who earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Cleveland Institute of Art and a Master of Fine Arts from Bowling Green State University), he co-founded “Artisans to the Knights,” specializing in artistic, handmade reproductions of medieval weaponry, shields and leather goods. In addition to exquisite custom-made commissioned pieces to clients from across the Midwest, they also sold to the public in multiple retail, galleries, shows, and festival environments. During the 1990s, they designed, built, landscaped, maintained, and operated a permanent thematic gallery to display and sell hand-produced artistic goods at the Great Lakes Medieval Faire in Geauga, Ohio. Bowen worked as a full-time partner in Artisans to The Knights and on various personal landscape and interior renovation projects until his passing in 2001.
