Art, Science, and Rock n’ Roll

Abigail Allan is an artist who does not really fit into any category whether it’s abstract or expressionism. She spoke Wednesday March 10th at Anoka-Ramsey Community College about her life and how it has helped create and shape her art.
Allan got her Masters of Fine Art degree at Minnesota College of Art and Design where she minored in biology and art history. When the art department found out her minor was science they were not too happy because art and science seem like polar opposites. She now teaches at Minneapolis College of Art and Design and sometime teaches at the Minnesota Science Museum.
Abigail seems to have a connection to animals and insects with deformities because she has a deformity as well. Drawing pictures of these creatures was sort of a way to let out her emotions even though she wasn’t aware of it. Allan started talking about how this one time this little girl came with her dad to one of Allan’s exhibits and the little girl had a really bad cold and was just really miserable, so when the dad saw the frogs he looked and said “look at these frogs, aren’t they cool?” and the little girl looked at him and said “no daddy, that’s sad” and that’s the reaction Allan wanted, she wants people to realize what is happening and that it’s sad.
Allan’s theory is that science fuels the ideas that turns into something personal; which people then turn into art.
People can relate to a cause or something going wrong in the environment if they have examples like sculptures or pictures of deformed species. She has many drawings and sculptures of the frogs from Minnesota that have more than the normal four legs. People react to that sort of thing because they see what is happening, especially if they have something to look at that actually looks alive or like it was once alive.
Allan decided to combine science and art because it intrigued her; she liked the gross things about life. Plus she really didn’t get modern art at all.
Abigail was explaining that the process of art and the process of science experiments are alike in a lot of ways. People have to observe what they want to draw and observe what they want to do an experiment on. Second they come up with ideas of what they want to happen with their specific art piece or what they think will happen with their science experiment. Third they actually draw/sculpt or paint the piece of art to see what happens or see how it will turn out. Same with a science experiment, scientists carry out their experiments and write down their results.
Her advice to art students or art majors is to take a lot of pictures of what they want to draw or sculpt. Make sure they are good pictures because they can forget what they want to draw or even some important detail that needs to be on there. She went through college without taking a picture and she regretted it.
To see more visit Abigail Allan’s website, , or her home page .