New A Brass Statue... That Looks Similar A Car. 1 Shaver You Lot Not, This Isn't A Car, It's A Lot Of Brass
Road Angel, 2016
Artwork © Terry Allen
Bronze with audio as well as light. 65 x 181 x 81 1/2 inches.
Collection of The Contemporary Austin. Commission, purchased with funds provided past times the Edward as well as Betty Marcus Foundation, 2017.2.
Photograph past times Brian Fitzsimmons.
This piece, shape inwards the Deep inwards the Heart Art Foundry, inwards Bastrop, was unveiled inwards Dec on the outdoor grounds of Austin’s sculpture commons at Laguna Gloria. The operate is an almost-exact re-create of Allen’s starting fourth dimension vehicle, a 1953 Chevy, except for a missing front end passenger-side tire.
That bike good instead hides a speaker that blasts, every bit Allen spot it, “Things you’d desire to hear coming out of a car.” an ongoing audio archive: recordings past times musicians, artists, as well as writers emanate every bit if from the car’s radio at random intervals, recounting songs as well as oral histories lived inwards the backseat as well as behind the wheel.
The American romance with the automobile as well as the opened upward route tin live seen throughout the artist’s decades-long career, every bit he came of driving historic menses inwards the 1950s, filled with the hope of adventure as well as escape. Allen has noted: “The feel of hurtling through groovy dark empty space...late at nighttime on a dead straightaway trace of piece of occupation of asphalt with headlights shining...driving a automobile every bit fast every bit it would go...and listening to The Wolfman on the radio turned upward every bit loud every bit it would go...is belike where every liberty I most value starting fourth dimension began.”
Road Angel, 2016, a bronze shape of a 1953 Chevrolet coupe, embodies a hit of emotional as well as nostalgic associations with the American automobile. The creative mortal has placed this three-wheeled automobile far from whatsoever road, resting haphazardly with the trees, every bit if the vehicle has careened off its path or the phase were develop for a lovers’ tryst.
Detail of studio wall with proposal for The Contemporary Austin – Laguna Gloria, 2016. Artwork © Terry Allen.
Lubbock native as well as one-semester Texas Tech dropout Terry Allen, arguably the starting fourth dimension of Lubbock’s legendary post-hippie semi-country singer-songwriters.
Allen’s starting fourth dimension 2 albums, 1975’s Juarez as well as 1979’s Lubbock (on everything), are every bit canonical to hard-core Texas music fans every bit Townes Van Zandt’s Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas as well as Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger; fifty-fifty those who don’t know Allen’s music firsthand bring belike heard his vocal “Amarillo Highway,” which has been covered past times the likes of Bobby Bare, Robert Earl Keen, as well as Sturgill Simpson.
As large every bit Allen looms over Texas music, however, he is fifty-fifty to a greater extent than revered every bit a visual as well as multimedia artist: his paintings, sculptures, as well as installations—which tin live flora everywhere from New York City’s Museum of Modern Art as well as Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art to the DFW as well as Houston airports—have earned him both national as well as international recognition.
https://www.thecontemporaryaustin.org/exhibitions/terry-allen-road-angel/
https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/return-of-terry-allen/