Nelda Jean Stowe

Nelda Stowe was daughter of the late Leonard F. and Nellie Mae Price and sister to Hilda Pennington and the late Garry (Cora Lee) Price. She had two children, David Price and Leslie (Bradley) Hendricks, seven grandchildren, three great-grandchildren, and numerous nieces and nephews.

You won’t find her work collected in any of the great museums of the world or on the walls of a crowded downtown gallery. She had no formal education in technique or expression or history. But you will find her art in the homes of those she loved and spilling out of her own apartment—paintings and drawings and jewelry and wood burnings and macramé and leathercraft. No one medium was sufficient to hold all of what she wanted to say or to be the only way she said it. She was enamored with the world—how beautiful it can be, even when others might dismiss it. Forget the miracle of sunrise after the longest night of your life; give her the gray evening, cloud covered, full of rain. She saw the magic in how the earth drinks from the sky and never once turned from what would drive the rest of the world to boredom or doldrums. She sought out her heritage, drawn to the Native American culture she was born of but not born in and merged her reverence for the natural world seamlessly with God. All of these were her passions. She took no slight interest in anything but added each thing passionately to her life and to her imagination. She made folk art from it ribboned with totems but especially flying things—owls and red hawks and blue jays, which rooted her as a person to this place and into something more otherworldly, a purer plane of spirituality than most can fathom as the burdens of our lives weigh us down. She bore no frills but came with bells on, ringing songs with her every step, at once saying remember me, remember the music of me, even before we lost her.

A visitation and memorial celebration will be held on Wednesday, October 11, 2023, at Pinecrest Funeral Home in Alexander. Visitation will begin at 4pm with a memorial at 6pm and fellowship to follow.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.pinecrestfh.com for the Stowe family.