Allen’s second solo show at Lawrence Street Gallery, TRANSFORMATIONS, extends her commitment to the ecology of the planet by featuring up-cycled art – collage in several media, assemblage, and reinvented artworks.

The art in TRANSFORMATIONS combines sustainability and artistic expression by turning discarded materials into something imaginative, whimsical, even beautiful. To quote Allen, “TRANSFORMATIONS continues the process I used in my 2023 show Recreation of incorporating fragments of nature and history, such as leaves, shells, feathers, seeds, flowers and photos, textiles, advertising illustrations, maps, postcards, magazine or newspaper copy, writing/text.” She reuses and compiles these ordinary fragments through composition, texture and color to create new patterns from old works. By focusing on the small pieces of a larger whole, Allen explores both the beauty of nature and the complexity of history.

In her current show Allen included some of the items collected over the years, such as vintage jewelry, textiles, photographs, her father’s tools and her hard-earned doctoral hood. “These transformations surprised me, as I hope they surprise the viewer,” says Allen.

After over thirty years of teaching college English – literature, writing, and women’s studies – she retired and started to learn about and play with art. She took classes at Marygrove College; Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center, with Duke Potts, Les Johnson, and Charles McGee but mainly with Laura Whitesides-Host. Other classes included Pewabic pottery, Roycroft Studios as well as workshops from Robert Burridge, Candace Law, Elizabeth St. Hillaire and Jacqueline Sullivan.

At Lawrence Street Gallery in Ferndale, she has exhibited at a solo show, “Re-Creations” and three two-women exhibits: “Our Mothers Worlds”, “Play Is The Thing” and “Exploring New Worlds” and several group shows. Allen has had a solo show at Ferndale Area District Library. Her work has appeared in numerous juried shows around metropolitan Detroit including the Scarab Club, Swords Into Plowshares Peace Center and Gallery, The Majestic Center, the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center, PARC, Brewery Park in Detroit, Cherry Hill Theater, and the Downriver Center for Arts and Culture where she was awarded Best of Show. Most recently she has shown work at the First Merchants Bank in Ferndale, Kayrod Gallery in Detroit, the Tribute to Charles McGee in Detroit’s Design Studio 6, the Strand Theater in Pontiac, and Grosse Pointe War Memorial.