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Diana Luhn Bower was 94 years old when she took her last breath on August 28, 2025 at
5:40 p.m.

Diana was born on November 22, 1930 in New York City to Hans Peter Luhn and Margaret
Herreshoff and was the eldest of three children; her two brothers were named Peter and
Chris. Her early life was much informed by her creative, inventive parents and aunts. Diana
enjoyed a rich life as a traveler, a peace activist, an artist, community organizer and urban
planner as well as a mother and wife. She was an intelligent creative who was a good friend
to many. Before her long stretch of life on Lopez Island between 1981 and 2024, Diana lived
a full life.

She sold her first painting when she was 15 years old and credits her high school teacher
with prompting her to take her art seriously. Diana recalled, “I had always loved art -
watercolors, costume design - and my art teacher said, “You’ve got to go to Yale. It’s the
best art school I know of.” Until 1950, Yale followed the Beaux Arts tradition, and many of
the classes took place in darkened rooms. After the first couple of years, Diana dreamed of
a trip to Europe and through much hard work she earned her passage and spent most of
the year soaking up art in Scotland, England, Paris and Florence. When she returned to
Yale, the art school had been transformed. She found the students and professors lively,
smiling and doing innovative work. It was at Yale that she fell in love with the letterpress,
block prints, and later, graphic design. She practiced under the tutelage of Josef Albers who
created the program at Yale and nominated her for the art prize she won in her senior year.
Diana’s craft dates to the 15th century, and she often said her art was the reason she got up
in the morning.

She graduated from Yale, married architect Ted Bower and settled in Seattle, where she had
two children, Holly and Dan. She credits Holly and Dan with having a profound influence
on her life. She said, “Their generosity and views about the world teach me so much. They
taught me that inaction is a fruitless path, you have to take action.”

Diana was a woman of action through the peace movement and community development.
She and her friends established the Madrona Preschool Enrichment program in the Central
District, which became the pilot project for Head Start in the Seattle Public Schools. She
was a community organizer with Seattle’s Model Cities program. Diana also worked as a
graphic designer on projects for the Zoe Dusanne Gallery, UW Press and designed several
books of NW Poets.

Years later, in the International District (ID), as an urban planner, Diana was active in
securing the Asian Language Health Clinic and worked extensively on establishing the
Hillside Community Garden and other community support organizations. She was an
effective and diplomatic liaison between the City, County and ID community activists
including Bob Santos. At the completion of her urban planning work in the neighborhood,
she co-founded the Cicada Cooperative Art Gallery locating it in the ID.
While working on her PhD in Art History, Diana taught in the UW School of Urban Planning
and was much liked and respected by her students and colleagues. She had an innate
ability to understand how people best integrate within communities for the betterment of
all, and her artistic eye for design as part of daily life influenced her work as a planner.

"In the early 1980’s Diana moved to Lopez to be closer to her daughter Holly (founder of
Holly B’s Bakery) as well as her three grandchildren Ty, Rom, and Galen, in whom she took
immense delight. She purchased the 1935 Homer’s farmhouse which she made into her
studio, allowing her to focus even more on her art. Later Ted joined her. Here too, Diana
continued her contributions as an artist and an activist. Many of us who live on Lopez
Island associate Diana with Chimera Gallery, a cooperative art gallery she proudly co-
founded with 14 other Lopez Island artists in 1986. She created the accompanying Chimera
block print that is utilized as the gallery’s logo.

Diana saw the world in color, whether it was watercolor painting or creating her block
prints, many of which she also painted. Combining prints with quotes that she referred to
as “broadsides,” stringing exotic and rare beads for beautiful colorful necklaces or
commenting on whether the shade of a shelf complimented or distracted from the paint on
the wall, color was always in her mind. She had a unique ability to create beautiful and
serene spaces with the simplest of objects. Diana was a longtime meditator, and shared on
several occasions how her experiences in meditation inspired her art.

She had a strong commitment to justice. An arrest and trial resulting from protests to
prevent nuclear annihilation, was life changing and furthered her resolve as a peace
activist. One of her finest prints was “Cellblocks for Johnny”, a fellow protester, who was
arrested and sentenced to time in jail.

Diana created and subsequently donated her art to causes that she believed brought more
justice into the world. She was gifted with an intelligent wit, a retentive memory for poetry,
music and Shakespeare, and was not shy about expressing her views.

Diana’s friends and family were close by during her last days and enjoyed fleeting moments
with her as she commented on her great love of the color of fresh flowers and her art that
surrounded her.

For those of you wishing to purchase some of Diana’s prints, please look for a spring sale to
benefit the Lopez Community Land Trust the week of March 17-22, 2026.