Terry Allen is a visual artist and songwriter raised in Lubbock, Texas. A graduate of the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, he has worked as an artist and musician since 1966. His numerous awards and honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship; National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships; Awards for the Visual Arts (AVA), Washington, D.C.; Bessie (New York) and Isadora Duncan (San Francisco) Critic Awards for the text, music, sets, and costumes for PEDAL STEAL (Margaret Jenkins Dance Company); second place in the 2004 AICA Award (International Association of Art Critics) for Best Show in a Commercial Gallery for DUGOUT I at LA Louver Gallery in Venice, California, curated by Peter Goulds; induction into the Buddy Holly Walk of Fame in 1992; and a United States Artists Oliver Fellowship in 2009.
His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally, including at Documenta and the São Paulo, Paris, Sydney, and Whitney Biennales. He is represented in major private and public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD); and the Houston and Dallas Museums of Fine Art. His numerous public commissions can be found at locations including L.A.’s Citi-Corps Plaza, the Moscone Center in San Francisco, the Stuart Collection at UCSD in La Jolla, California, Oliver Ranch in Sonoma, California, and airports in Denver, Houston, and Dallas–Fort Worth. His book and theater piece DUGOUT was published by the University of Texas Press in 2005. In 2010, the press also published Terry Allen, an extensive monograph on his work featuring essays by Dave Hickey, Marcia Tucker, and Michael Ventura.
Allen has written for and worked in both radio and theater. Selected staged works include JUAREZ (A SIMPLE STORY); THE EMBRACE...ADVANCED TO FURY; ANTI-RABBIT BLEEDER; WARBOY (AND THE BACKBOARD BLUES); and GHOST SHIP RODEZ, which he wrote and directed. For PIONEER, he designed the set and co-wrote the work with Jo Harvey Allen and Rende Eckert; directed by Robert Woodruff, the Paul Dresser Production was performed throughout the United States. He composed LEON AND LENA (and Lentz), directed by JoAnne Akalaitis at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota. For Chippy: Diaries of a West Texas Hooker, he designed the set and costumes, co-wrote the work with Jo Harvey Allen, and co wrote the music with Joe Ely and Butch Hancock. Directed by Evan Yianoulis, the production was co-produced by the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia and Lincoln Center’s “Serious Fun” series in New York.
Allen has recorded over 12 albums of original songs, including the classics Juarez and Lubbock (on everything), as well as his most recent album, Bottom of the World. His songs have been recorded by a diverse group of artists, including Bobby Bare, Guy Clark, Little Feat, Robert Earl Keen, David Byrne, Colin Gilmore, Doug Sahm, Ricky Nelson, Cracker, and Lucinda Williams. He has also written numerous songs for film and theater, including the soundtrack for Jane Anderson’s Showtime Emmy-nominated The Baby Dance. In the Los Angeles Times, critic Dave Hickey described him as “a true modern day renaissance man...renowned for his effortlessc ommand and outrageous combination of disparate genres and media, according to the task at hand.” Terry Allen lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife, actress and writer Jo Harvey Allen.