We were lucky to catch up with Jerry Allison recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Jerry, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

It may seem odd, but I wish to describe a project that never got beyond the design stage. Yet I, and all who have seen it, think it very significant and deeply meaningful. In 1999, the government of Argentina put out an international call to artists. They asked for proposals for a large scale public art installation to memorialize “The Disappeared”. These were the thousands of people who were abducted and murdered by the fascist military government of General Augusto Pinochet, who overthrew the democratically elected government in a violent coup in 1973. All whose political views were to the left of the fascists were suspect – political activists, trade union organizers, school teachers, medical workers and many others. Over 80,000 were imprisoned, tens of thousands were tortured, unknown thousands were disappeared, most of whose bodies were never recovered. Many were dumped into the sea from helicopters after torture but still living. Pinochet and his inner circle made themselves rich from “privatizing” public property. Pinochet was finally arrested in London in 1998 on numerous charges of crimes against humanity and spent the rest of his life under house arrest in Argentina. On his death it was discovered he had secreted away hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bank accounts. A new civilian government managed to come to power and in 1999 put out the call to memorialize “The Disappeared”.
I thought my background in architecture and design, combined with my strengths as a visual artist, made this a project I very much wanted to engage. I conceived of the installation as a large scale maze of freestanding walls, making reference to the rooms of houses, or of a group of houses in a small village. As one wanders through the maze, one confronts images of the disappeared or their survivors. These are negative spaces, holes in the walls of concrete or Cor-Ten steel. The holes are the contours of human figures, larger than life. These include the arms of a man bound behind him with rope, an adolescent girl in torn clothing, hiding her nakedness with her hands, a wailing frightened toddler, an old woman huddled on the ground and more. One exits this symbolic maze of rooms and houses, houses of horror, and follows a gentle uphill path to a mound and finds the Star-Catcher. Three times life size, this expressionist sculpture strains upward, one foot on tiptoe, reaching, reaching and just touching an illuminated many-pointed star. We have walked through, many have lived through this hell on earth and have come out the other side to reach for heaven.
In the end, the panel of jurors turned out to be one person. That person was a famous American abstract sculptor, who shall be nameless here. On the first day of judging, he announced that all proposals containing representational imagery would be thrown out and not considered.
What more can I say…

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

For some years I practiced Architecture and Interior Design. I taught Art at college level, and then my best teaching gig, at an Arts Magnet High School in New Haven, Connecticut. All this time I was also making and exhibiting my work. Now I do only fine art – Photographjy and Mixed-Media Work. I show and sell my work locally, nationally, occasionally internationally. I do accept commission portrait work, always with an artistic bent. My clients are the adventurous type, not those looking for “studio portraits”. Under the right circumstance I might take on a private student or do some design work. But making my own work is a full time occupation and completely fulfilling.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

This is an important question and one that is little addressed. When I began my career as a visual artist, the use of the term “artist” was understood to be a visual artist. The Sunday New York Times (pre internet) had an entire section of the paper devoted to the Arts – visual art, music, theater, film, dance. Today it is a single page, sometimes two. The term “artist: today is understood to be a performing artist, generally in the field of pop music. Why has this happened? I went to a blue collar public high school in the South. We had elective classes in Art and Music all four years and Honors English if you could make the cut. Today, many schools offer no Art or Music classes. Clearly, the message being sent is that these “non-academic” classes are not important, that cultural enrichment is not important. The only thing of importance is educational training to prepare one for the job market. I have younger friends with degrees in Engineering who never took a single liberal arts class in four years of college. This is a recipe for turning out a poipulation of shallow technocrats who value only money, who have no social conscience or interest in living in a rich and diverse cultural environment.
This is not a problem that can be addressed by allocating a few dollars to the occasional public art mural, or a yearly art fair in the park. It is a deep structural proplem in our economy and social structure. It is one manifestation of the huge problem of growing inequality in the society. In the early days of my career as an artist, admission to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City (one of the greatest museums on the planet) was by voluntary donation.Many times I was short of cash and would get in for one dollar, once for a quarter. Today admission is a set fee of thirty dollars. What person from disadvantage can pay that?
I don’t see any quick fixes for this on a societal level. For starters, our public schools, Pre-K and up, need enormous increases in funding. Public schools have had their funding steadily cut for the past forty years, and this must be reversed. There is a national epidemic of school absenteeism. Making schools more interesting and inviting could help reverse this.
On an immediate level. there are things you, dear reader, can do about this problem. Make yourself part of the Art Scene. Join, or at least go to, our local art museums. The Denver Art Museum is an excellent institution, with a rich and varied permanent collection and a fascinating variety of traveling exhibitions. Denver hosts many galleries and attendance is free and appreciated. Often their opening receptions are like Happy Hour with snacks and drinks, where you can meet and talk to artists and others interested in art. And lastly, look yourself in the mirror and ask “when, if ever, did I buy an original work of art, hand made by a real artist?” A quality work of art, including a photograph printed by the artist, is a living, breathing entity. Living with it is a very different experience than living with a mass produced poster of a famous work of art. Or no art
You can support artists and take the first steps to creating a thriving creative ecosystem.The artist and the collector are a dyad, and both need each other. Both benefit.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I have been a voracious reader and film watcher all my life. For years I followed the reviews of the late Peter Schjeldahl in his column “The Art World” in the New Yorker magazine. No other contemporary critic matched his claritry and insight. The major art critic and philosopher of the 20th century, Walter Benjamin, was a huge influence. His work is deep, not easy reading, but profound. I think every day of his quote “The task of the true artist is to disrupt the status quo and change the way people see the world”. I strive to live up to it. I don’t read what artists say about their own work. The pop-art painter Robert Rauschenberg said “when an artist explains his work, his audience closes their eyes”. Astute critics like Schjeldahl and Benjamin see from a higher vantage point.
Michaelangelo Antonioni’s 1967 film “Blow-Up” directly engages with photography. Set in swinging sixties London, it deals with a photographer’s issues of perception, recording and reality in a thoughtful way.
I admire the clarity and terseness of Hemingway’s writing. I am blown away by the vivid dreamlike imagery in the stories of Leonora Carrington, the Surrealist painter and sculptor. For years I have been influenced by writers on Zen Buddhism like Alan Watts and D.T. Suzuki and the Zen Poetry of the Haiku form. Han Shan’s “Cold Mountain” poems are so fresh, and immediate that it is hard to believe they were written about 600 A.D.

Contact Info:

• Website: coyotesboneyard.com coyotesdream.com
• Facebook: Jerry Allison (Jerry Allison Artist Photographer)
• Other: voyagedenver.com>interview>conversations with jerry allison shoutoutcolorado.com/meet-jerry-allison-artist-photographer/

Image Credits
A images are mine – Jerry Allison