Select Portfolio - Stuart Allen - Page 4
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
-1
archive,paged,post-type-archive,post-type-archive-portfolio_page,paged-4,post-type-paged-4,stockholm-core-2.1.2,select-child-theme-ver-1.0.0,select-theme-ver-7.1,ajax_fade,page_not_loaded,,qode_menu_,wpb-js-composer js-comp-ver-6.5.0,vc_responsive,elementor-default,elementor-kit-15382

Archive

60 Minutes of Air

60 Minutes of Air: each 398 cubic inches, the volume of air I breathe in one minute at rest, 2008
sailcloth, fiberglass, string
each piece: 7 3/8″ x 7 3/8″ x 7 3/8″
overall: approx. 16′ x 8′ x 6′
temporary installation: JayJay, Sacramento, CA

Sailcloth installations

35° 41′ 01″ N ~ 105° 56′ 49″ W, 2007
sailcloth, string
228″ x 216″ x 12″
installation: Ursa Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

38° 34′ 20″ N / 121° 25′ 50″ W, 2002
sailcloth, string
180″ x 132″ x 120”
installation: JayJay Gallery, Sacramento, CA

33° 39′ 44″ N / 117° 59′ 55″ W, 2002
sailcloth, string
204″ x 180″ x 120”
installation: Huntington Beach Art Center, Huntington Beach, CA

29° 28′ 58″ N ~ 98° 30′ 1″ W, 2007
sailcloth, string
138″ x 150″ x 180”
installation: Finesilver Galler, San Antonio, TX

Light Maps

The changing color of daylight is recorded at different intervals of time using a piece of white sailcloth attached to a camera lens. The resulting photographs are cropped to vertical strips, then assembled to make one print; a portrait of the light in one place, in one timeframe.

At the base of each strip, small numbers indicate the time of day for a given frame. Sunrise and sunset times are marked when relevant. Titles indicate the location in longitude / latitude coordinates.

Excerpt from a review by Wendy Atwell, 2007.

In the Light Maps series, [Allen] clips a screen, made of the same white sailcloth he uses for his kites, onto his camera. With the camera’s automatic light-balancing sensor disabled, Allen photographs light from a single point, identified in the works’ titles by each site’s geographic coordinates.Sunset – One Photograph Every Two Minutes / 29° 27’ 8” N ~ 98° 30’ 4” W / 03 – 16 – 2007 conveys a delightfully surprising variety of colors. Allen is intent on recording an unmediated and pure representation of color as created by the sun, intervening atmospheric particles and everything else that conspires to make the color of the day… [These works] felt like a gift, as if he had done me this great favor of caring enough to record a beauty that is always passing and ephemeral. As records of moments that technically cannot be observed by the human eye, the Light Maps works give the gift of awareness and prompt a desire to look more carefully.

Air and Water Kites

A Kite for Flying in Water, 2007
aluminum, stainless steel, string,
25″ x 38″ x 3″

A Kite for Flying in Air, 2007
sailcloth, maple, string,
25″ x 38″ x 3″

Seven

Seven, 2007
sailcloth, aluminum, turnbuckles, stainless cable
72″ x 138″ x 11″
temporary installations: Gensler Architects, Houston, TX and Finesilver Gallery, San Antonio, TX

Box Kite: 23,890 Cubic Inches

Box Kite: 23,890 cu. Inches: Approximate Volume of Air I Breathe in One Hour (at rest), 2007
sailcloth, maple, spruce, stainless hardware
28.8″ x 28.8″ x 28.8″

Excerpt from a review by Michael Abetemarco, THE Magazine

… Consider Allen’s Box Kite: 23,890 cu. inches / Approximate Volume of Air / Breathe in One Hour (at rest), which is exactly what it says it is: the approximate volume of breath produced in one hour while at rest expressed in cubic inches. This information has no bearing on whether or not it can actually be flown, but like his other kites, including one designed for flying under water, it probably can. But Box Kite brings us back to the idea of constructs as the extension of breath and voice, which also have measurable qualities.

Allen’s work puts us in mind of the symbiotic relationship of man-made machines with the temporal conditions that enable their use, but with an inherent respect for the conditions themselves: ever changing despite attempts to measure and contain them.

For the complete article click here.

Mixing Chamber

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.

Bend

Bend, 2007
ash, cherry, string, stainless cable and hardware,
80″ x 36″ x 2″

Baja

All of the photographs is this series are small sets of pixels extracted from a single digital photograph, taken by the artist in Baja California, Mexico in 2003. Titles indicate the section of the original photograph from which the pixels are taken. Aside from a dramatic increase in scale, the pixels have not been modified or re-arranged.

For more information about this series click here for an artist’s statement.

29° 26′ 14″ N ~ 98° 28′ 55″ W

29° 26′ 14″ N ~ 98° 28′ 55″ W, 2007
sailcloth, maple, string
59 x 41 x 4 ft.
temporary installation: San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX

29° 26′ 14″ N ~ 98° 28′ 55″ W is a site specific installation for the Great Hall of the San Antonio Museum of Art. The title indicates the latitude and longitude coordinates of the site. Nine twisting bands of heavyweight sailcloth stretch east to west across the width of the Hall. Lit almost exclusively by overhead skylights and windows on the north and south facades, the piece is designed to call attention to the ever-changing color, direction and intensity of daylight.

For more information about this piece, please click here for an essay by SAMA curator David Rubin.