We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Beau Allen Collins. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Beau Allen below.
Alright, Beau Allen thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
It’s actually two moments that I have summarized as the innate & the extrinsic.
The innate comes from this never-ending obsession I have with solving problems and wanting to communicate through physical and visual terms. Even down to my earliest memories, I couldn’t help but want to take anything and everything apart and then try to work backwards to put it back together again. I wanted to know how things worked and always wanted to know why. I was very big on legos as an adolescent as well – I loved to mix and match pieces to create objects, designs, scenes that could interact with each other, or even displays to house things like a shark tooth I had found on the beach one summer.
I grew up in eastern Tennessee to a single mother in a trailer where you had to fix things and take care of what you had, so between my natural draw towards this behavior and my circumstances growing up, it created an intrinsic quest to design a better life. I was already innately creative and then provided a situation where practice was necessary – and then furthermore communicative. I saw my mother provide take care of us in ways that differed from an American stereotype and came with additional stressors that could be eased by me solving how to fix a running toilet. This was how we showed love.
The extrinsic is ultimately the realization that this is art. As I studied and experienced life (because of my innate self) I was drawn to design, film, art, theater, music, etc… The pivotal point in my pursuit of a creative/artistic path was incredibly and simply the understanding that it’s just who I am.
I developed mentors like Bob Dylan who wrote about the things I only thought about, or Marcel Duchamp who taught me that just because I am not technically proficient enough to paint a Sistine Chapel ceiling doesn’t mean there aren’t profound ways of communicating transformative ideas with art. Like his fountain in relation to me fixing a leaking toilet as a way to show love, I began to understand the circumstances as to why this really is my ‘calling’ if you will.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My name is Beau Allen Collins – I am an artist, actor, and designer currently based out of Atlanta, GA.
I obtained my BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York for photography & video in 2017. Creatively, I have done everything from stage designs at New York Fashion Week, creative direction & music videos for musicians, lighting design in feature film & TV shows, print and textile design for menswear labels, photographing concerts and fashion for multiple publications, press release writing for art gallery exhibitions, concept design for storefronts and interior layouts, and even assisting other artists and photographers such as Nir Arieli, Urs Fischer, and Tom Sachs.
I left NYC for Atlanta in 2021 after landing a role in Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things’ (Season 4), as well as the FX show, ‘Atlanta.’ Over the last year I have been doing custom framing and art archiving/restoration alongside developing my own work & launching a new creative collective called ‘mkspc___’ to integrate conceptualized and fine art influenced content in partnership with developing brands, musicians, etc…
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
Yes, and it is that the resources themselves are everywhere around you and readily available for those that seek them. Growing up where and how I did, information (especially in regards to art) rarely came first hand. It required me to take responsibility for my own dream and understand that if this is what I want for my life – it may not come easily, it may take more time, it may be difficult but ultimately if you want this: go get it.
We live in a society drenched in information – the greatest resource I have is my mind and the choice to exercise it.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
Peace.
I see art as a visual language that can convey ideas, emotion, truth, history, progress, and peace. I think there are times in my life or even in my day-to-day where I am self-tormenting. Art provides for me an escapism to the trials and tribulations of this experience I have for as long as it lasts.
I remember my first ever dream was to be an astronaut, and I was all in. I WAS ALL IN. I studied books about space, watched an immense amount of NASA documentaries, had lists taped up in my room of everything required to one day be an astronaut, my blankets and sheets had space shuttles, I littered the entirety of my ceiling with glow in the dark stars and planets – and then on February 1, 2003, Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it reentered the atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts on board. I was crushed beyond belief. I gave up that day on everything and never looked back.
Now that I am older, I completely understand that it was never about being an astronaut – it was about escaping my world and the fantasy being the utmost extreme a child could fathom: outer space.
Art provides a similar platform of escapism, but also allows me to discuss my experience and find peace within that. I like saying that “art doesn’t always provides answers, but can still give resolutions.” Through expression I am able to find peace I wasn’t able to before and haven’t found a greater since.
I have something to say, and I am saying it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/beauallencollins
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beauallencollins
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/beauallencollin
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWPjjWyNniBylbJrHUB4_Lw