Sandra Allen approaches trees anthropomorphically, observing the way a tree’s patterns of growth respond to weather, insects, and humans. She is particularly interested in how these changes are recorded in a tree’s structure and bark. Therefore, after touring Wave Hill for the first time in October, she was attracted to the prominent graft markings of the copper beech tree (Fagus sylvatica ‘Atropurpurea’) located near the shade border. The massive copper beeches on the grounds were planted in the early 1900s by grafting a seedling tree onto the rootstock of the green European beech. The tree represented in Scion offers a particularly dramatic example of this technique with the graft skirting the base above the roots. To develop her exacting drawings, Allen begins by piecing together a series of photographs and overlaying the subject with a grid. She then prepares the paper with a light grid and starts the drawing on one part of the paper. Working with a range of pencils from 6H to 6B, she models the branches and bark in a highly expressive way. From a distance her work appears photorealistic, but while a photograph is flat, her drawing brings out the physicality and the complexity of the tree itself. The iconic tree is singled out, like a botanical specimen with no trace of the landscape or place, underscoring its materiality and weight.

The subject of trees has captured Sandra Allen’s keen interest since 2001. Her complex, large-scale pencil drawings have been included in exhibitions about drawing at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; the Drawing Center, New York, NY; and Mario Diacono, Boston, MA. In 2007, she created a monumental site-specific drawing for the Decordova Museum in Lincoln, MA. Allen is represented by Carroll and Sons Gallery, where she will have a solo exhibition this fall, and she will also exhibit in New/Now at the New Britain Museum of Art in New Britain, CT. In 2008 she received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship Grant. She earned her BFA from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and her MFA from Yale University.

More information can be found at: www.sandraallen.com