Los Angeles Times
Saturday, March 28, 1987

 By Mark Chalon Smith

 ALLISON: BOLD IMAGES OF SOUTHWEST 

Texan's Work to be Shown at Tustin Gallery

 It's common for Dan Allison's prints to be characterized as leading examples of contemporary Southwestern American art. One critic even excitedly described the Houston native's work as "gorgeous Tex Mex."

 Besides living in the Lone Star state for much of his 34 years, Allison festoons his candy-colored prints with fantastic cacti, surreal cowboys, airborne arrows and other elements that might be seen as strictly regional symbols.

 But don't press the point with him. In his polite but determined drawl, he makes it clear that any such brand narrowly describes his art and aesthetic perspective.

 "I think my work is vaguely influenced by Mexico and Texas, [but] a lot of the things I do don't have anything to do with cowboy or Texas art," said Allison, whose exhibition at the Chemers Gallery in Tustin opens today and continues through April 18.

 I think what I'm doing is more universal than that and uses things from various sources. Really, that 'Tex Mex' thing is just a convenient package, a label that doesn't tell the whole story."

 The tag may leave him feeling a little uneasy, but it has undoubtedly helped Allison secure a reputation that goes beyond Texas' borders, even the country's borders. His prints have been the focus of major exhibitions on both coasts and recently were shown in Poland and Yugoslavia.

 Allison acknowledges that their distinctive American flavor makes them attractive to curators who hope to present insights into our culture, but he dismisses any suggestion that they sum up the national or regional experience. What they do offer, he said, is a personal and often funny way of looking at that experience.

 There's no doubt that humor is a theme. I think much of my work has a tongue-in-cheek comment on life," he said. "I think people get a kick out of my stuff. Little kids love to go up to it, they want to touch it…There's definitely a playfulness there."

 But he's quick to note that his prints are not merely visual jokes. Allison said he uses serious as well as comic symbols to generate responses from the viewer. Those symbols can get pretty eccentric, he conceded.

 Take, for instance, "Si Fi Chi," which was recently displayed in Poland. Two four-eyed desperadoes shoot it out with ray guns on a dreamy prairie while a Chinese woman gazes longingly at an automobile flying over the horizon.

 Then there's "St. Billy Bob," which shows a steer with a man's body (or is that a man with a steer's head?) being crucified in a shower stall while holding an electric guitar. A faithful dog offers flowers from below.

 Both are curious and cartoonish but also vaguely disturbing. As with most surreal art, it's up to the individual to find a meaning, and that's how Allison wants it. But he also wants to give his audience a frame of reference, so he chooses his symbols carefully.

 "You want something recognizable so people will have a place to start and will find it [the work] accessible in some way," he explained. "It's important to me that I communicate" through the ciphers.

 Besides their highly symbolic nature, Allison's prints are distinguished by a palette of colors that span the spectrum. These aren't blues, reds and greens; they're electric blues, emergency reds and neon greens.

 These trademark colors, which he achieves through his own variations on the aquatint process (he uses only one plate for printing colors instead of the three plates normally used), are essential in producing the vividness, or "magic," as he calls it, of his imagery.

 The hues also show an allegiance to Chagall, whom Allison acknowledges as his major influence. Besides Chagall's bold colors, there's also a sense of his composition in Allison's work. The Russian artist's floating lovers and barnyard animals are evoked, if only slightly, in some of Allison's more romantic scenes.

 "Besides the beautiful colors, his scenes always deal with people, [and there is] a very humanistic quality to his painting," Allison noted. "There's always strong emotion there, nothing is detached, and that interplay of human emotion draws me in."

 Allison said his own work has become simpler and more "full of heavy-duty feelings" in recent years. Where his earlier prints have a Pop Art quality with distinctive representational images, his more recent art is freer and slightly abstract. Broad swatches of color and looser outlines for his figures now dominate.

 "I think people can still tell what's going on, but the more basic images allow them to feel more," he said. "That feeling is important….I think visual art fills in between music and the written world. I hope my art fills in." 

The Houston Post 

Wednesday, April 26, 1989 

By Susan Chadwick, Post Art Critic

 JAPAN TO SHOW HOUSTONIAN'S PRINTS

 HOUSTON PRINTMAKER Dan Allison, who has been showing his colorful prints in Eastern Europe for the past three years, is having his first solo exhibit in Tokyo beginning Thursday.

 The 35-year-old Allison, a native Houstonian and graduate of Sam Houston University in Huntsville, was the winner in 1987 of the biennial East European Grand Prix awarded by the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia.

 Allison says he is the first American from outside New York to win the first-place prize in the invitational show of graphics work. Allison says previous winners were Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist and Joan Miro.

 Allison's solo show at the fashionable Parko Art Gallery in Tokyo was promoted by Japanese critic Ichiro Hariu, one of the jurors of the Yugoslav graphics show.

 The gallery will feature about 70 of Allison's collographs, which are prints on paper and canvas pressed from Masonite that has been carved and fixed with raised and textured materials like sandpaper and glue.

 The artist says he believes the Japanese, as well as the East Europeans, are interested in his prints because they are "colorful, figurative and American." Allison's recent prints feature images of fighter planes, missiles, ships and astronauts.

 "Most of the graphics they're doing in Eastern Europe are black-and-white," says Allison. "They haven't even started with color yet."

 In addition, he says, printmaking is thought of more highly in that part of the world.

 Allison's most recent show in Houston was a solo exhibition at McMurtrey Gallery in September.

 In June, Allison will leave for a two-week lecture tour of Eastern Europe sponsored by the U.S. Information Service. That trip arose out of winning the print competition in 1987 and will culminate in a solo exhibition at the 1989 print show in Ljubljana. 

 Sunday, December 16, 1990 

By Janet Tyson 

IT'S DIFFICULT TO RECONCILE GLIB IMAGES, SERIOUS TECHNIQUE

 FORT WORTH -- American Icons, Dan Allison's exhibition of graphic works and wall reliefs at William Campbell Gallery, provokes a mixed reaction.

 On one hand, it includes works that are quite moving, that seem to know what they are about in a very solemn, fitting way. On the other, it presents prints in which subject matter and style are at odds in a way that is not provocative, but muddled.

 That first reference applies to the wall reliefs -- something new for Allison, a highly regarded printmaker -- and to gigantic prints from Allison's New World Documents series, as well as to a pair of muted images of American Indian chiefs.

 The nine reliefs consist of thick, tombstone-shaped slabs with angular niches pressed into their centers. The slabs' surfaces are loaded with dense squiggles of dark red, gold and gray paint. The niches are inset with small objects that most often allude to art and warfare. They seem intently focused and very personal -- done more for the artist than anyone else.

 The big, unique collographs of maps are more outer-directed -- not only tremendously expansive in terms of format, but also incorporating more universally appreciated subject matter. Throbbing with rich color and complex textures, they are filled with a wealth of cryptic little symbols and visual puns. And such levity prevents them from becoming too ponderous.

 Mothers and Sons, for example, shows two round halves of the globe, with continents rendered on the basis of incomplete information and oceans alive with old-fashioned sea monsters and gods of the sea and sky. But a Godzilla-like monster can be spied wading across the Atlantic, which also is afloat with modern battleships. And an airplane nose dives in from the upper left corner.

 That kind of sardonic, multilayered humor is congruent with the overall presence of the work.

 The exhibition continues through Jan. 12 at William Campbell Contemporary Art, 4935 Byers Ave., 737-9566.