Fayum Burial Portrait-Egypt 2nd Century A . D ., encaustic and raw linen , 28.5 x 24.5 inches , 1981-1991
Born in Dowagiac , Michigan , on November 5 th 1915 , June was fortunate that her parents , Mr . and Mrs . John W . Bowen , cherished her instinctual affinity for art and provided her with private art instruction from the time she was thirteen years old . She warmly credits her husband of seventy-eight years , Frederik “ Fritz ” Lampe ( 1914 - 2012 ), with relentlessly supporting her in her artistic aspirations since the day they met . For the first eighteen years after her high school graduation , June worked as a skilled art conservator in South Dakota but remained dedicated to the study of painting and sculpture by studying with many notable instructors such as Cuban-born New Orleans painter Leopoldo Giraudy , Uruguayan-born New Orleans sculptor Juan Jose Calandria , a graduate of the Académie Colarossi , Paris , and New York watercolorist Edgar Whitney . While taking sculpture classes after she and Fritz had moved to New Orleans , June was offered a gallery assistant position at what was to become the first Lampe Gallery of Fine Art location in Gentilly , a neighborhood of New Orleans . The gallery owner at the time , Mr . Edward Manes , was so impressed with June ’ s exacting professionalism in handling the gallery ’ s day-to-day procedures that he eventually pleaded that she and Fritz purchase it for their own business . It would indeed become the Lampe family ’ s gallery for thirty-four years , wherein June would display her paintings and encaustics and offer tutelage in the glazing methods of the Old Master painting technique while her husband Fritz conducted a thriving frame-making business . Tragically , the gallery was hit by lightning in 1997 and burned down , but the Lampe family persevered and within three short months they had relocated their gallery to its current location on Metairie Heights Avenue in Old Metairie . Fate struck again in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina flooded their New Orleans home with eight feet of water , initiating the Lampes ’ final residential move to the apartment above their gallery . Somehow , the inadvertent result of these serious events is a life in which home and studio coalesce , inseparable , in a constant flux of creation and remembrance .