“I have been doing this work as an outcropping of the spiritual journey that I’ve been on for many moons,” said artist Wendy Allen of “Coming Home,” her upcoming pop-up exhibit in downtown Springfield this Saturday, Aug. 1, sponsored by Downtown Springfield, Inc.
An accomplished multi-media artist based in Springfield for many years, Allen has been a past member of many arts organizations, but now operates independently.
“It’s not like I put my work out there to sell it much,” she reflected. “It happens. I think it can be contaminating when you have to do it for finances. I’m glad I don’t absolutely have to.”
Although she started as a painter, Allen’s work for many years has been in the from of fabric collage.
“The roots for this work come from memories as a young girl of sitting around a quilting frame with my mother and her friends,” she shared in a written artist’s statement. “It was a salon of sorts. I would recognize our clothing in the scraps of quilting fabric. To this day I primarily use re-purposed fabric for my pieces.”
Allen describes her work as containing multiple levels or threads. The outer or physical level represents the natural world and is manifested in what she calls her “Little Beauties.”
“To create these smaller pieces I bead birds, butterflies, flowers, trees, etc., and place them in worlds that I create out of fabric,” she wrote. “I believe they capture a moment, or an essence of the beauty that our Mother Earth so abundantly offers, which we frequently ignore out of the busy complexity of our lives.”
The other level is inner or spiritual and is embodied by Allen’s longstanding interest in creating mandalas, a circle enclosing a square with a deity on each side that is used as an aid to meditation. Allen has visited India multiple times, where she gathered information and experience that continuously inform her work on this front.
“In India, I was in a group where they showed a mandala, how to look at it and feel into the energetic impact of it. And I realized, well, this is a map of the cosmos. This has got it all going, you know. It’s got birth and expansion out, and then it’s got collapse in and death. I have a lot of very nuanced, intricate mandalas. The mandala is a reflection of the workings of the universe. That’s consciousness.”
If Allen’s work has an agenda, it is to affect her viewers’ perceptions not only of the art on display but of themselves. “If people perhaps could rock back into themselves and receive the work, get out of their judgments and the ideas, and have it impact them. And then through that they would see themselves. If they recognize that beauty, it’s just a step to recognizing their own beauty.”
“Coming Home” will be on display this Saturday only, beginning at 5 p.m. at Haxel Law, 314 E Adams St. It is part of a series of pop-up shows sponsored by DSI. For more on Wendy Allen and her work, visit awakenedheartart.com/
Scott Faingold has been an instructor at University of Illinois Springfield, founding editor of Activator magazine, a staff reporter for Illinois Times and co-host of Old School Bleep, a music-centered podcast. He can be reached at scottfaingold@gmail.com.
