ABOUT

Bobbi Allen, a native of Boston, MA, graduated from the Boston Museum School and Tufts University. She has exhibited her work; paintings, drawings, prints, collages and mixed media sculpture in numerous group and solo shows throughout the country including; The International Print Center of New York, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Washburn Mulvane Art Museum, The Minnesota Museum of American Art, DeVos Art Museum and many other universities, galleries and art centers in the U.S. She has received several grants and residencies including: Vermont Studio Center, Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship, a residency at Penland School of Crafts and was a finalist for a Massachusetts Council for the Arts fellowship. She currently lives and maintains a studio in Asheville, NC and is an active member of the Asheville Printmakers.


Sometimes when I look at the landscape there is an unexpected moment when the light changes and everything is dramatically altered. The bright white cumulus clouds cast nearly black shapes over the mountains or conversely the sun highlights the mountains in a stunning white and yellow glow. These moments are the jumping off point for my monotype/collages, “Land Mountain Sky”.
I work on an etching press and this indirect method or transfer process expands on that same sense of surprise I had when I saw the change on the mountain, but now it happens when I slowly lift the paper from the plate to reveal a change in an image. These alterations continue until I have enough strips of color to assemble a landscape.
Throughout the process of building the landscape collages, I will have amassed a mountain of colored scraps. I cut or tear them into small rectangular shapes and begin arranging and rearranging them until they become a kind of mosaic landscape that sits inside of a square, these are the “Color Stills”.