Nfocus magazine detailed how the Portland-based artist selects discarded books with compelling illustrations and meticulously excavates their pages while keeping the binding intact to produce three-dimensional sculptures. The resulting pieces expose hidden layers of text and imagery that appear to interact with one another in unexpected ways. Allen’s method turns what many would consider obsolete material into dynamic visual narratives drawn entirely from the book’s original content.
According to the Russo Lee Gallery, Allen was born in Illinois in 1977, received a BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2000 and has since exhibited his book excavations across multiple U.S. cities including New York, Seattle, Chicago and Miami. The gallery’s records show that his works reside in public collections at UCLA, Johns Hopkins University, Ringling College of Art and Design and the University of Colorado Boulder among others. His pieces were also included in the 2009 Bellevue Arts Museum exhibition The Book Borrowers: Contemporary Artists Transforming the Book.
Oregon Art Beat reported that Allen compares his carving process to Michelangelo extracting a figure from marble, noting that each book dictates its own theme through its existing illustrations and words. “I’m just trying to set the stage where the different elements of the book seem to be interacting, almost like you could see them moving or communicating with each other,” he said in the segment. The program noted that Allen often discovers surprising alignments as he digs through the pages, with historical images sometimes echoing contemporary issues.
Laura Russell, owner of the Portland gallery 23 Sandy that specializes in book arts, told Oregon Art Beat that Allen’s excavations fall squarely into the category of book and paper art by dissecting volumes page by page to form entirely new graphical sculptures. She represents his work to libraries and institutional clients who value the narrative depth he creates from found materials. Russell emphasized that the labor-intensive technique produces objects that reward close viewing through their intricate layering.
The Russo Lee Gallery biography stated that Allen began altering found objects and magazines before focusing on books, drawn to the way excavation reveals how the past mirrors the present. “It’s almost intriguing to see how the past mirrors the present,” Allen said during his process of selecting vintage volumes ranging from university texts to illustrated guides. This approach has led to series based on specific themes such as golden nature guides that emerge sporadically as suitable books become available.
A 2024 My Modern Met overview of book-based sculpture noted growing interest in techniques that repurpose discarded tomes, with artists spending hours per piece to achieve precise cuts and folds that give books renewed life as art. One such work inspired by a classic tale required 16 hours of detailed page manipulation to form pop-up characters along the edges. These efforts align with Allen’s practice of giving overlooked books a second existence as cohesive sculptural compositions.
