Stuart Allen is an artist whose work deals with fundamental elements of perception such as light, time, gravity and space. He has shown photographs, kites and sculpture in galleries and museums throughout the U.S. and abroad. His work is found in many private and public collections including the Tokyo Kite Museum, the Crocker Art Museum, the DiRosa Art Preserve, UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, and U.S. Embassy collections in Canada, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, and the Republic of Georgia.
Allen has completed permanent public art commissions for the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, Canada and the Police Headquarters building in Davis, CA. His work has been published in a variety of books and journals including: Picturing California’s Other Landscape: the Great Central Valley, Terra Nova: Nature and Culture, You Are Here: the Journal of Creative Geography, Zyzzyva and Artweek. Allen has lectured or served as a visiting artist at many fine institutions including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Weisman Art Museum, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and a number of university art departments nationwide.
Allen studied architecture at Kansas University and graduated from the photography and video department of the Kansas City Art Institute in 1994. He lives in San Antonio, Texas with his wife Kelly Lyons, their daughter Aidan and son Vincent.
Allen is represented by the following galleries: PDNB, Dallas, TX; JayJay, Sacramento, CA; Jan Manton Art, Brisbane, Australia; Haw Contemporary, Kansas City, MO.
Stuart Allen, artist, photographer, sculptor, public art, kite, kite maker, art consultant, Jayjay, haw contemporary, pdnb gallery, science and art
Mixing Chamber, 2008
Collaboration with Potter-Belmar Labs: Leslie Raymond and Jason Jay Stevens
sailcloth, steel tubing, string, video projections and sound
approx. 140 x 40 x 15 ft.
temporary installation: San Antonio Art Museum
Introductory text courtesy of San Antonio Art Museum:
This installation is a new collaborative work by Stuart Allen and Potter-Belmar Labs (Leslie Raymond & Jason Jay Stevens). Using tall fabric screens, three channels of video projected on the screens, and multi-channel audio, the artists have created a large mixing chamber, with audio and video signals overlapping and combining within the space. Conceptually, the installation functions like a giant luminaria made using the tools of the 21st century, rather than from the traditional wax candle.
Designed specifically for the Cowden Gallery, the installation is a natural collusion of the work of these artists. Allen has constructed a series of vertical screens in a similar vein to his current installation, 29° 26′ 14″ N ~ 98° 28′ 55″ W, installed just below the ceiling in the Museum’s Great Hall. The temporal elements of this installation are characteristic of Potter-Belmar Labs’ audiovisual performance works. The video is comprised of three different projections, one red, one green, and one blue. When the colored lights overlap, they create the new and surprising colors from the light-mixing palette. The accompanying sounds result from a mixture of various tonalities moving in and out of synchronization with each other.
