Friday Favorite: Jane Ingram Allen

This Friday’s featured artist is Jane Ingram Allen! Jane travels  around the world making art – using natural materials and handmade paper she creates from local plant waste materials. Jane lived and worked in Taiwan from 2004-2012, as a Fulbright Scholar in 2004 and 2005 and then continuing as an independent artist. 

Below is a detail of one of her lovely maps:

I love that she uses found natural materials and native seeds and often teaches public workshops on making handmade paper using locally available plant materials.

Comfortable with the fact that "nothing could ever be considered a 'permanent' work of art," Jane Ingram Allen creates unique, participative installations which "go with this flow" and consciously use "the natural processes and human and animal interaction as a positive contribution to the artwork ... and to the environment."

Below is a photo of Jane creating a map:

One project – Disappearing Boundary (1996) – consisted of a fence made of fallen branches and handmade paper with wildflower seeds in it. The paper components were designed to dissolve in the rain over time, dropping seeds along a plowed line of earth beneath the fence structure. "The line of wildflowers that emerges will also gradually disappear as they merge with the existing vegetation. The wildflowers ... will nourish birds, butterflies and bees, and the decomposing branches and handmade paper will act as mulch."

Jane has received awards to do artist in residency projects in the USA, the Philippines, Japan, Nepal, Brazil, Tanzania, Indonesia, China and Taiwan.  For more information about Jane and her work, visit her website at www.janeingramallen.com and her blog at janeingramallen.wordpress.com.

Have a great weekend!