About Allen
before the pandemic i had a straight job commercializing pharmaceutical products. during the first lockdowns i picked up a piece of wood and started making shavings, unsure what else to do. i ended up with a spoon.
in the time since, human work of an immaterial nature has been all but condemned by generative tools; often mislabelled as artificial intelligence. to put effort into digital art is to throw that effort into a chipper-shredder.
so, why wood? the materiality (the “woodenness”) of my work evades devaluation and annihilation by the aforementioned artist-killer robots. all wood also has inherent beauty and is unique. wood has an inextricable connection to our planet’s ability to support life. the material offers an infinite craft challenge which never gets old, and that craft has a romantic connection to the history of human endeavor. so, there are a bunch of reasons which feed into my choice of material.
the fact that every piece was a part of a living being guides every project that i undertake. my work doesn’t intersect with the timber industry. no trees are cut to feed my operation. salvage, driftwood, windfalls, gifts – those are my sources. around 95% of the material i use comes to me for free.
i seldom work from templates or drawings. this means that every piece is unique in form as well as grain. the material informs every decision i make about its shape. every piece is the sum of decisions made one at a time, to honor the material and make something beautiful, useful and honest.
that’s sorta where i’m at with my thing.
