Jane was invited by Helen Hiebert, artist, author, teacher and papermaker, to appear on her monthly podcast called “Paper Talk”. Jane is the featured artist for April 2023. You can listen to the Podcast at this link: https://helenhiebertstudio.com/podcast/episode-106-jane-ingram-allen/

Here is an excerpt from the Notes that accompany the podcast with some images of Jane’s work:

Jane Ingram Allen is a sculptor and installation artist who uses hand papermaking with natural materials and collaborative processes to create  indoor and outdoor artworks that raise public awareness about environmental issues.  Jane has received numerous awards for residencies and community public art projects in the USA, the Philippines, Japan, Nepal, Brazil, China, Tanzania, Taiwan, Turkey, Indonesia and other countries.  She was a Fulbright Scholar artist-in-residence in Taiwan in 2004 and 2005 and a Fulbright Specialist in Turkey in 2015.  Jane is a former college art instructor and currently teaches workshops and writes about art for SCULPTURE and other art magazines as well as doing independent curating.  She was born and raised in Alabama and has lived in 7 different states and in Taiwan for 8 years. Since 2012 she has been based in Santa Rosa, CA, and continues showing her work in the US and internationally.

We talked about how she got into environmental art, which is so well suited for handmade paper. And we discussed several of her environmental installations.

Allen works often with seeds and paper, and her first project with seeds in the pulp was titled Earth Quilt, created in 1995 (the 25th anniversary of Earth Day). You can see the progression of Allen’s work with students installing the piece on Earth Day 1995 at SUNY Morrisville in Morrisville, NY; the wildflowers starting to come up; and the field in full bloom several months after the quilt was planted.

Happy Earth Day 2023!