New Works  2002

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Words mingle with altered images in new exhibit. 

By PEGGY HEINKEL-WOLFE Special to the STAR-TELEGRAM 

Dan Mitchell Allison, whose latest work hangs in William Campbell contempo- rary Art this month, belongs to that group of artists who are as interested in
the process of making art as in the final product. His recent output uses the processes of contemporary printmaking, specifically polymer-photogravure and intagllio, while his input depends on a computer. His final product combines elements of original, running text embedded in digitally scanned and altered images of flowers or old movie stills.

Starting with depictions of roses not yet in full bloom, one series of florals conjures up human forms more than studies in botany. "Lost" uses the vantage point underneath the rose, focusing on the curved lines made by the petals at the stem. Allison digitally alters the peach color of the flower to resemble flesh tones. The sepals become spine like and the leaves like limbs. 

In Dark Orchid 1, 2  3, Allison brazenly borrows the link made by Georgia O'Keeffe and other modernists between the sexual anatomy of this showy flower and the human form. He manipulates the flower's colors to coffee-brown flesh tones, creating a sfumato so intense that the dip below the stamen becomes cavernous and disappears into the background. This digital manipulation and output allow Allison the kind of productivity he chronicles not by year but to the day. This practice creates special significance for the work he dated 09/ll/0l, Tomorrw. 

Here, his text comes to the fore, running around a rose suspended above a digitally-altered city skyline, "Shara grabbed her things, kissed the kids," the text begins. Her early morning accomplishments read like the to-do's of any harried, working mom, but stop in a haunting half-cadence: "and made a list of things she'd do toinor- row." 

Allison develops his own cast of characters in a film-noirlike story line for another series with titles such as Insanity, Big Jerk, Red Gun and Far Away. Using images he borrows from movie stills, he creates a protagonist in Jack. Jack's story includes many lists, too, full of the clichés. Jack wears a fedora, carries a red gun. talks about getting off the merry-go-round and having feelings of deja vu. 
In Bad Guy, the running text has another list for the story's big finish: "cracked the safe, kissed the girl, found the map" and if he could just "find his keys he'd blow this joint." 

While Allison brings solid artistic values to these digital processes, the final product has its limits. The exhibit includes Big Chief, a large-scale work that breaks the limited, square rhythms and colorized feel inherent in digital output. The 83-inch-by-64-inch collograph from the late 1980s, provides a retro glance, perhaps to Allison- son's own youth. The renderings common to a classic school drawing pad have their own lasting iconography, among them a skull, a soldier and fighter jet firing their weapons and a baseball player ready at bat.