Local Artist Brings Dead Back to Life

With his long hair, rock t-shirts, black jeans, and heavy spiked leather gauntlets, Allen Berry, looks like your typical nihilistic twenty-something. For those few fortunate enough to get a peak behind the spikes there hides a shy, soft spoken, polite young man who is deeply convicted about his work. Though he's not one for lengthy conversation he is more than willing to talk about what his art means to him:

"My work is my life. Simple as that. It is the reason. Without it, I would be nothing. It is an extension of my thoughts and beliefs. I use bones quite a lot because of their beautiful shapes as well as their spiritualsignificance. . .With my art, I question my own beliefs and form my own spiritual structure. . . I can actually reach out and touch a sculpture and walk around it and that makes it more real to me. Because perhaps, the physical is the only real truth we have. . . "

In his piece "Lady Luck" Allen arranges such undesirables as animal jaw and femur bones into a surprisingly delicate, feminine composition. The message to the viewer is clear as the piece unabashedly reflects the duel nature of the "Lady Luck" persona in its ability to both create and destroy fortune. His use of reclaimed biological materials, such as discarded bones, to produce provoking and startling images is not new. However, his arrangements, which often combine materials associate with death and decay into easily defined icons of common beauty, are unique. Allen has a knack for bringing the dead back to life.