Roberta Allen
A b o u t
From 1973-81, Roberta Allen showed alongside Sol LeWitt, Robert Ryman, Carl Andre and others at John Weber Gallery in New York. Her conceptual art, combining text and image, has included drawings, collages, artist books, photo/text works, installations, digital prints and sculpture. 30 one-person and over 100 group exhibitions have taken place in galleries and museums internationally. She has work in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum and MoMA among other public and private collections. Her art papers have been acquired by The Smithsonian Archives of American Art.
Her art originates in language. She has explored how language informs our perception of images. Playing with possibility, she creates her own contexts and defines subjective views as facts as she explores human experience. She presents her own interpretations (sometimes humorous) to encourage viewers to reflect upon their subjective experience.
A Tennessee Williams Fellow in Fiction and a Yaddo Fellow, Roberta is a micro and short story writer, novelist and memoirist with nine published books, including her latest, The Princess of Herself, a story collection.
Roberta lived briefly in Amsterdam, Athens, Berlin, and Mexico. Her travels, often alone, include Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt, Central America, Mali (for the New York Times Magazine) and the Peruvian Amazon which inspired her memoir about her trip alone. Her travels inspired many of her stories and her novel.
She taught creative writing at The New School for many years and has taught at Columbia University. Since 1991, she has taught private groups in writing workshops. She teaches now 1-on-1 classes on Zoom.
Roberta Allen: Art and Words are One
"The reemergence of an artist is a wonderful thing, but when that artist is as talented as Roberta Allen, then it is truly a joyous occasion."
--HYPERALLERGIC