We recently connected with Pamella Allen and have shared our conversation below.

Pamella, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

It is quite the challenge to choose only one for my most meaningful project because art making is my lifes work and I always endeavor with intention to create works that speak to the soul and makes space for reflection and inspired peace. Having said that, the one that I would choose is “Canopy” the 2 room ceiling mural that I created as a commission in the Bellevue Hospital CPEP patient rooms for the NY Health + Hospitals Art In Medicine Program. It was extremely meaningful for me to create these two 25’ murals of trees and sky for individuals admitted into Bellevue who are going thorough psychotic episodes because my family, like many, have an intimate knowledge with the gauntlet that is the mental healthcare system. My beloved late brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was brought to these types of spaces at different times in his treatment. I understood through my brothers experiences that my art making, what I was making and how I was making it, would directly impact the mental wellness of individuals who had to exist in these spaces in moments of extreme vulnerability and the impact had to have a balancing effect, to touch on universal memories of clarity, positivity and joy. One of the true manifestations of art as medicine.

Pamella, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Pamella Allen is a Jamaican born, Brooklyn based visual artist in practice for over 30 years whose works have been exhibited in traditional gallery and non-traditional settings, in site specific public art corporate commissions for healing spaces such as Bellevue Hospital for the HHC Art-In-Medicine program, community centers and private collections across the globe. A largely self-taught expressionist artist, Pamella’s work is layered in process. Utilizing traditional acrylic, oil and encaustic painting, printmaking, sculpture, paper making, collage, Installation, photography/video essay & prose to develop her own archetype, a universal language of images inspired by symbolism, indigenous practices and the natural world that speak to the diversity of her Jamaican/African heritage and lived experiences as a woman, an immigrant living in the USA, and a world traveler and sailor. “My works question, place, history, culture, ritual and our relationship to our natural landscapes.”
Art In Activism~ Following “a calling to make art with the youth” while living in Africa and then while in residency in India; In addition to her continued studio practice, for the past 12 years Pamella has been in practice as a teaching artist sharing her creative process with community in school settings, senior centers, museums, and healing spaces throughout New York with organizations creating site specific public arts mural, mixed media installations, and anthologies for publication. “The benefit to bringing arts practice into collaboration with the community cannot be overstated, it is priceless watching individuals blossom in the wonder of their own creativity and come together to celebrate their unity and diversity by using their creative voice”.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The ability to tell story visually, to connect with self and through that process to connect with others is the most rewarding aspect of being a creative.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

There is a recurring theme that society as a whole has of artists that I continually push back against. This is the false idea that artists are not good business people and that art-making is not hard work.
Artists are not taken seriously as the resilient entrepreneurs that we actually are. Venture capitalist do not invest in us but do invest in crypto, an intangible. The wealthy who have in small percentages supported artists are called “benefactors” as though they are doing us a charity, banks do not give artists loans to build our businesses, we are not considered to be the true business people that we are and it is a falsehood that infuriates me.
I have always had to work at a number of “outside jobs” to support myself and create a budget to run my business of art; waitressing, hostessing & managing restaurants, working in fashion as a stylist and now as a teaching artist. Even today, in conversation with folks who have known me and the trajectory of my career, when i tell them I am working, they automatically think i am talking about one of my “outside jobs” and I have to tell them I am working in studio. Making art is hard work physically, mentally and emotionally and financially; it takes research, focus, energy, intelligence, resilience and as my late mother used to say, “Moxy”

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.pamellaallen.com/#/
• Instagram: allen.pamella
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pamella.allen.7758
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/user/PamellaAllen
• Other: https://linktr.ee/allen.pamella