Roberta Allen Explained

Roberta Allen
Birth Date:1945
Birth Place:New York, NY
Nationality:American
Period:1960s–present

Roberta Allen is a conceptual artist, and fiction writer who explores ways in which language changes or informs perception of images. She is known for her multi-media conceptual works. She has appeared in over one hundred group exhibitions worldwide.

Early life and travels

Allen was born and raised in New York NY. At the age of twenty, she traveled alone to Europe and lived briefly in Athens, Amsterdam and Berlin, and later in Mexico. Over the years, she has traveled, often alone, to the Peruvian Amazon, Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt, Mali,[1] and countries in Central America. Her travels have inspired many of her stories.

Art career

Allen is known for her conceptual works, which combine image and text, and include drawings, collages, artist books,[2] photo/text series, sculpture and installations. Her works in the early 1970s were inspired by Kierkegaard’s belief that our deepest experiences occur in the form of contradictions, and that wherever there is contradiction, humor is present. Through the 1970s, she exhibited alongside Sol LeWitt, Robert Ryman and Carl Andre, among others, at John Weber Gallery in New York.

Allen began as a painter in Amsterdam, where she had her first one-person gallery exhibition in 1967. After several one-person shows in New York, she joined John Weber Gallery in 1973 and had one-person exhibitions there in 1974, 1975, 1977 and 1979.[3] She also had one-person gallery exhibitions in the 1970s in Milan, Dusseldorf, Brussels, Munich and Rome, and one-person museum exhibitions at MoMA PS1, L.I.C., NY, in 1977, 80; the Kunstforum, Städtische Galerie in Lenbachhaus, Munich, in 1981,[4] and the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Perth, Western Australia, in 1989.

After 1981 she preferred to stay outside the art world, while continuing to make conceptual art and occasionally exhibiting. In 2014, the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in La Jolla, California, began a catalogue raisonné of her 1970s artist books. A one-person exhibition of her 1970s art was presented at Minus Space[5] in Dumbo, Brooklyn, and a one-person show of recent conceptual drawings and one-of-a-kind artist books at the Athenaeum in 2016. A one-person exhibition, "Some Facts About Fear," was presented in 2017 in Minus Space in Brooklyn.[6]

Writing career

Allen has published, among other books, three micro and short story collections, a novel, a novella and a travel memoir. In her writing, she questions the way in which we perceive the world and the self, and she considers the way our minds work and the act of relating. Her interest in language is the bridge that connects these separate artistic pursuits

She began writing fiction in 1979 while making conceptual art. Her first stories were published in 1980 by Sun & Moon Press[7] in the anthology Contemporary American Fiction, along with John Ashbery and Walter Abish, among others. Her first story collection was The Traveling Woman, (Vehicle Editions).[8] Her other books are The Daughter, (Autonomedia),[9] Certain People, (Coffee House Press);[10] Amazon Dream (City Lights)[11] Fast Fiction, (Story Press),[12] The Playful Way to Serious Writing,[13] The Playful Way to Knowing Yourself,[14] (both Houghton Mifflin) and The Dreaming Girl (Painted Leaf, new edition Ellipsis Press).[15] Her latest story collection is The Princess of Herself, published by Pelekinesis Press in 2017.[16]

Her short shorts and short stories have appeared in over 300 literary magazines, including Conjunctions, Guernica, Bomb, The Brooklyn Rail, Open City, The Collagist, Gargoyle and in many anthologies, including Micro Fiction (magazine)|Micro Fiction, published by W.W. Norton in 2017.

She received the 2015 Honorable Mention for The Gertrude Stein Award for Fiction. She has been a Tennessee Williams Fellow in Fiction at the University of the South and a Yaddo Fellow.

Selected one person exhibitions

Grants and fellowships

Multiple edition artist books

Selected bibliography

Selected public collections

Teaching (writing)

Teaching positions include: The Writing Program, New School University from 1992 – 2010, Columbia University's School of the Arts, University of the South, Sewanee, TN, Parsons School of Design, NY, Summer Writers' Conference, Hofstra University, International Women's Writing Guild Conference, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY. Allen's private writing workshops began in 1991 and continue to the present.

Notes and References

  1. Mali Adventure, From Timbuktu to Dogon Country. Roberta . Allen. September 17, 1995. 24. New York Times Style Magazine.
  2. Book: Allen, Roberta . Possibilities . 1977 . Parasol Press Ltd . 1.
  3. Book: Jules . Heller. Nancy G. . Heller. https://books.google.com/books?id=ReZkAgAAQBAJ&dq=john+weber+gallery+Roberta+Allen&pg=PA1771 . Roberta Allen. North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary. Garland Publishing, Incorporated. 1997. 978-1-135-63889-4 .
  4. Web site: Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus . München.
  5. Web site: Roberta Allen: Works from the 1970s. Minus Space. April 4, 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20150627171644/https://www.minusspace.com/2014/04/roberta-allen-works-from-the-1970s/. 27 June 2015.
  6. Web site: Clusters of Loose Geometries in Conceptual "Thought Drawings" . hyperallergic . John Seed . November 11, 2016.
  7. Web site: Sun & Moon Press Archive . Folder 14 Allen, Roberta Box 2.
  8. News: Shaw. Janet. Quicksilver Nightmares. The New York Times Book Review. June 8, 1986. 36.
  9. Book: Allen, Roberta . 1. The Daughter. Autonomedia. Jun 1, 1992.
  10. News: Winters. Laura. Certain People & Other Stories. The New York Times Book Review. March 23, 1997. 18.
  11. Book: Allen, Roberta . 1. Amazon Dream. City Lights Publishers. October 1992. 0872862704 .
  12. Book: Allen, Roberta . 1. Fast Fiction: Creating Fiction in Five Minutes. Story Pr. 1st. June 1997. 1884910270 .
  13. Book: Allen, Roberta . 1. The Playful Way to Serious Writing. Mariner Books. 1st. September 9, 2002. 061819729X .
  14. Book: Allen, Roberta . 1. The Playful Way to Knowing Yourself: A Creative Workbook to Inspire Self-Discovery. Mariner Books . April 29, 2003. 061826924X .
  15. Book: Allen, Roberta . 1. The Dreaming Girl. Ellipsis Press. 2011.
  16. Book: Allen, Roberta . 1. The Princess of Herself. Pelekinesis Press. 2017.

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