With classic science fiction as his muse, Allen employs crafts, rockets, scientific apparatus, and cosmonauts as a vehicle not for space exploration but for inner contemplation. His view is not glossy or futuristic, but nostalgic, timeworn, experienced. Star Trek meets wabi-sabi, the Japanese aesthetic of transience and the beauty of use. As viewers of the work, we too can be transported—backward to a time when life was easier and Americans had big dreams of conquering space, forward towards something unknown and maybe even better, and inward to a more complete understanding of ourselves.
