Made In L.A. is coming to the Hammer, Barnsdall Park, LAXART, and billboards around town on June 2 and will showcase sixty emerging, under-recognized Los Angeles artists–one of which will be voted to win a $100,000 prize. In order to help you make an educated vote this summer, we’re counting down to Made In L.A. by showcasing each artist participating in the biennial.

Roy Dowell is an Atwater based paint and collage artist. His work smashes together multiple references and sources from art’s past to create abstract–and straightforward–pieces.

Dowell’s work captures pieces from all aspects of life to form his collages, incorporating fabric, posters, signs, and even pottery into his abstract narratives. The pieces are graphic yet fluid, organized yet non-objective: whereas many of his fellow artists show their diversity through dipping into different mediums, Dowell throws them all onto one canvas. In recent days, he’s been incorporating in elements that he created himself, items he has fabricated to place into the visual mélange he’s created, which he mentioned to ARTnews a few years ago. His work is an expression of things he collects and influences, the things he has acquired physically and mentally in life filling in the assemblages he creates. “My work is often an outgrowth of my collections, even my desire to collect. If I can’t buy something, I can make it,” he said to ARTnews.

Dowell comes to Made In L.A. after an already extensive resume of sharing his work locally and around the world. Dowell has shared his collages and assemblages from the windows of LACMA to LACE to quite a few at Margo Leavin Galelry. Dowell currently is a professor at Otis and has been since 1982, where he has served as a chair of Graduate Studies since 1989. Dowell is no newcomer to sharing or creating new work: he represents the “under-recognized” group of artists who will be showing (and competing) with the younger, “emerging” artists.

We’re excited to see what Dowell shares as he is a pro who may be able to teach the Made In L.A. kids a thing or two about new work. We can of course expect a graphic abstract collage from him of found and created items that form his work. Dowell is one of the easier to consume artists at the show and we love him for that: we’re pumped to see the work he brings.