Professor and career artist Edwin Merton Owre passed away peacefully at the age of 97 near his home in South Hero, Vt., on January 3, 2026.
Born to a loving and provident family in Tillamook, Ore., in 1928, just before the Great Depression left so many struggling, Ed joined the U.S. Marines at the tender age of 17, serving bravely in the Pacific Theater at the tail end of World War II. Returning to Oregon, he worked a myriad of jobs to support his artistic dreams. A veritable Renaissance “he-man” with a tender heart and not a lazy bone in his body, Ed deployed his youthful brawn in a dazzling array of ways. Highlights included work as a Tillamook lumberjack, firefighter, cement mason and shipbuilder. He also picked up some gentler assignments between these enterprising gigs, working as a shoe salesman, bookkeeper and even a door-to-door baby photographer. Ed never ceased to surprise and delight his family with the occasional vignette from these long-ago pursuits.
Benefiting from the new G.I. Bill, Ed then gathered up his savings and crossed the nation to pursue an education in studio art in New York City. There, in the mid-1950s, he excelled at both the Art Students League and the Cooper Union. He went on to earn an MFA at Yale in 1963. After taking teaching jobs at Wilkes College in Pennsylvania and then Dartmouth College, Ed accepted a tenured professorship at the University of Vermont, where he taught, inspired and delighted multitudes of students for over 30 years, until his retirement as chair of the UVM Art Department in 2003.
Ed met his loving and devoted wife of 60 years, Brenda Matteson Owre, a Vassar graduate, while he was in Vermont one summer working with renowned architect and fellow Yale alum David Sellers on a cluster of “design/build” houses, affectionately known as “Prickly Mountain,” in the Mad River Valley. Once married, the couple moved to Hanover, N.H., so Ed could teach at Dartmouth. There they had their only daughter, Ursula, in 1967 before moving to Burlington to join the UVM faculty. Ed taught sculpture and drawing, while Brenda taught English and American literature and writing as an instructor in the English Department.
Throughout his teaching years — and well beyond — Ed pursued his own art career with passion, originality, wit, prodigious skill and unwavering dedication. Often labeling his works “constructions,” Ed ingeniously united sculpture, drawing and painting within each of his hefty and often vibrant 3D wall pieces. Employing bold materials like diamond plate, lead roofing, wood blocks, plexiglass and rivets into each abstract “landscape,” he was architect, builder, painter and sketch artist in one.
Critically recognized by renowned galleries in New York City and Boston, in 1980 Ed was chosen as one of the nation’s top Northeastern artists and asked by second lady Joan Mondale, an avid patron of the arts, to loan a piece for display in the vice presidential mansion. Ed was a consistent contributor to the prestigious Edinburgh Arts Festival throughout the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, and his art was also represented in contemporary galleries throughout Europe. Locally, he had numerous solo shows at the Fleming Museum and Burlington City Arts, among others.
Ed’s own body of work aside, his students (now a creative diaspora, some staying local, others spread far and wide!), loved him best for his enthusiasm, playful spirit and genuine interest in their progress. No “easy grader,” Professor Owre impressed upon his students the lifelong value of studying studio art as a discipline of hands-on creation, no matter their academic major or career interests beyond his classroom.
And he always made it fun! From Elvis-themed picnics serving up “the King’s” favorite recipe of grilled peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwiches to the founding in UVM’s Williams Hall of “the Kitsch Museum,” a community-contributed collection of popular plastic knickknacks, from Betty Boop salt shakers, Trolls and Pez dispensers to velvet Elvises and a singing trout. This whimsical endeavor lives on to this day and once earned Ed a cover story in Seven Days as “the King of Kitsch,” a sobriquet he loved, as a serious artist who never took himself too seriously.
But perhaps he was most devoted to his family, secretly clearing and fitting the family’s attic room with a disco ball, lights and stereo system to surprise his preteen daughter, Ursula, one Christmas in the late ’70s, and decades later turning the family’s old “Caddy” into a chicken float with his young grandchildren to enter into the local South Hero Fourth of July Parade.
When away from Burlington, Ed and his wife were intrepid adventurers, outfitting VW campers to live in with their school-age daughter during two academic sabbaticals across Europe in the ’70s and ’80s. With Brenda as navigator, they traversed the continent pre-GPS, pre-ATM and pre-cellphone, visiting hundreds of museums, cathedrals and historical palaces in support of Ed’s research. All of this was before settling down to make his own art with local materials, first in a rustic seaside village of 30 people on the Peloponnesus and later on the Côte d’Azur, a stone’s throw from Henri Matisse’s renowned “chapel,” past which their daughter’s school bus went on its daily route.
Always down-to-earth, Ed loved all animals, whether they be “great” or “small.” The Owre household was always run by adored and adoring felines, who at times had to share their quarters with a rabbit, two gerbils, several rescued mice, tropical fish and even a spider aptly named Charlotte.
A brave, strong (both physically and mentally), and most generous soul who always saw the bright side, Ed never, ever complained, even when his body and memory began to fail in the last few years of his life. To his very last days, Ed delighted in singing snatches of Little Orphan Annie’s buoyant song “Tomorrow” and parted from his visiting grandchildren with a nugget of upbeat advice borrowed long ago from Bing Crosby: “Let a smile be your umbrella on a rainy day!”
Ed is predeceased by his adored older brother, Peter (Pete), and younger brother, James (Jim) Owre, and survived by his loving wife, Brenda; and their daughter, Ursula, her husband, Neil Masterson, and their two children, Blake and Allegra.
We are deeply grateful to the tender caregivers at Birchwood Terrace Rehab and the McClure Miller Respite House who looked after Ed in his final months and weeks, treating him as if he were their own father. “We all loved him,” his nurse said when it was finally time to say the final farewell. Ed will never be truly gone, for his spirit lives on in our memories — and in his brilliant oeuvre of art.
A memorial in celebration of Ed’s life will likely take place when the weather warms and the days lengthen, with details to be announced. Anyone who wishes to give a token in honor of Ed’s memory may consider donating in his name to one of his favorite charities: Best Friends Animal Society or the World Wildlife Fund.