Arts/Entertainment
University Daily Kansan / Thursday, October 29, 1987
KU professor draws on his life for illustrations
Chris Duval/KANSAN
Above: Tom Allen, professor of design, created this album cover illustration for Columbia Records' James Rushing Esq. in 1957. Right: Allen illustrates books and magazines, including Esquire, Life and the New Yorker.
By MICHAEL MERSCHEL
Staff writer
Tom Allen could easily brag about his career. He doesn't.
Allen, professor of design, has had his artwork appear in Life, Esquire, and Sports illustrated magazines, and he has a shelf full of books, he has illustrated.
In the book "Innovators of American Illustration," Steven Heller writes that Allen "was, in the mid-fifth century, the new impressionistic illustration."
Only the paint stains on his blue jeans betray the fact that Allen, who speaks with a soft Tennessee accent, anything to do with the world of art.
Even Allen said he felt like an impostor among the circles of big-name artists and musicians he was a part of.
"It's more like a game I made up, and these are the players in the game."
Regardless of how he feels about his fame, Allen has become an important part of the design program at KU and is credited with starting projects that have created a sense of excitement in the department.
In spite of the work he has done, Allen said working with students still was one of his biggest rewards.
Alen grew up on the outskirts of Nashville, Tenn., in the 1930s. He started taking art lessons when he was 9 years old.
He attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville on a football scholarship. After two years, he transferred to Chicago, where he graduated in 1952.
After serving in the Marines for two years, Allen moved to New York City. There, he did some drawings and drew ads for NBC television.
He then went to work for CBS, where he illustrated a datebook and record covers.
In the 1960s, Allen started doing illustrations for Sports Illustrated. Allen's drawings were used like photographs on stories about fishing trips around Nicaragua and other areas in Central America and the Caribbean.
His work from those trips looks like snapshots that have been retouched by an impressionist painter. Colors overlap and figures are blurry, but the images, such as one of fishermen scooping a fish out of the water, are always clear.
It was an assignment from Sports Illustrated on college basketball rivalries that brought Allen to KU for the first time in the early 1970s.
Allen also did 13 drawings for a series of stories about Harry S. Truman for Life magazine, but the magazine stopped publishing before the series ran as intended. One illustration ran as a cover, and three were used in the magazine's final edition. All 13 drawings hang in the
Truman Library in Independence, Mo.
Allen's most recent job has been illustrating children's books. "In Coal Country," a book about growing up in a Virginia coal town by Judith Hendershot, was a runner-up for the best children's book award given by the Boston Globe and Horn Book Magazine.
This week, "In Coal Country" was picked by the New York Times Review of Books as one of the 10 best illustrated books of the year. Allen said
Allen said that illustrating that book came naturally to him, because it dealt with growing up similar to the way he grew up.
"It wasn't a coal-mining town, but everybody was poor," he said.
Allen is working on his own book about growing up on his grandfather's farm outside Nashville, where he grows corn or a child
Allen said his work grew out of his own experiences.
"If it's not out of my own experi-
ences, it has to be something I
empathize with."
Allen said he drew on his whole life for what to put in his drawings.
"I store a lot of stuff, like attitudes and actions and things." he said.
Allen also is working on putting together two shows, one of his own work for the Tennessee Fine Arts Department. When he called "Innovators of the other," called "Innovators of
American Illustration," is for the Spencer Museum of Art. The Nashville show opens Feb. 13, and the Spencer shows open March 27.
Allen might take satisfaction from his accomplishments as an illustrator, but what drives him now is a desire to pay back the profession for what it has done for him.
He also illustrates all the jazz profiles for the New Yorker magazine, as he has for 21 years, and he takes on other illustration projects
"I feel the compulsion to give back to the profession that got me here in the first place," he said. "It's not just serving students. At the same time, I'm only serving the profession itself by preparing talented people for it."
Allen said he liked feeling that his work was going out to people. Sometimes, he said, a free-lance worker was able to attend the Federal Express deliveryman
"It's nice to win an award for a book," he said. "It's nicer to feel it's a book that contributed something to other people."
The people he helps mean a lot to Allen — more than his status. To put it in perspective, Allen pointed to a postcard he received from a former friend and written to say that what Allen had taught her made her life richer.
"It's important in that it gives me some leverage, but this," he said.
saw that we had an opportunity being here in the middle of the country to have an impact on the world of visual communication from here.'
Illustrator and professor of design
indicating the card, "it's the cheese at the end of the maze."
Andy Pavich, Chicago senior, who took Allen's classes for two semesters, described Allen as a conceptual teacher.
"He tries to make you find your own voice in illustration," he said. "He gets you to know yourself."
Allen doesn't teach down to students either, Pavich said.
dents either, Pavich said. I
Although he is renowned all over
the world, his portraits, you feel like
you can sit down and talk about
anything." he said.
"He's an idealist. He's a purist." Pavich said. "He's a purist in everything he does, just with life and being honest with your yourself and concepts."
Allen started teaching at KU five years ago as the Hallmark visit professor, a job that was supposed to last two years.
"I saw that we had an opportunity being here in the middle of the country to have an impact on the
world of visual communication from here." Allen said.
Allen was never replaced at the end of his two years and said that the state was gradually taking over his position from Hallmark.
In his years here, he has used his connections in art circles in New York City and elsewhere to help bring in artists for the Hallmark Symposium, a lecture series he thought of and convinced the Hallmark corporation and the School of Fine Arts to run.
He leads art students on trips to Europe each summer. He also has helped create another full-time faculty position in the design department and helped find a professor to fill it
"I don't feel I have to do it all," he said. "But if it's worth doing, it's worth doing completely."
Knowing that he has helped boost the illustration sequence and design department is something else Allen said he was proud of. Allen credits the department's faculty with making the improvements possible.
"It was the willingness of the faculty to move and change — that's what made it possible," he said. "I was just the catalyst, that all."
Dick Varnier, assistant professor of design, said Allen had provided leadership in the illustration program at IBM. What already existed in the program
Varney said working with Allen had been easy from the start, because both shared similar visions
of what could be done with the program.
Bruce McIntosh, associate professor of design, who said he was brought to KU this year in part because of recommendations from people who knew Allen, said that he felt a sense of excitement about the design program that went back to ideas started by Allen.
"There are certain people that are not only good at what they do and cherished and renowned in their situation, but they're good people." he said.
"He's not only a hell of an illustrator and a terrific teacher, but a terrific worker. What more can he do with them? Those to choose work with?" McLeston said.
Allen, who will turn 60 in January, said he had no plans to retire soon.
"I'd go nuts if I weren't working," he said.
But he said two of the projects he was working on, his story about his grandfather's farm and a book on his life's work that might come out of the Nashville show, could mean he might cut back on his illustrating and his involvement with the design program.
"If I could get a contract, I could write it in a way I feel good about and buy it."
"That's not to say I'm going to quit doing books, but it would give a sense of completeness at it. There it will cease to be an illusion. It would cease to be an illusion."
Local artist works with subdued nature
Bv KIRK ADAMS
"Summons" is the title of one of the many works done by photographer Wieslawa Contoski, Lawrence. She said "Summons" dealt with the unfortunate but inevitable aspects of death
Staff writer
Chris Duval/KANSAN
A Lawrence artist collects leaves and driftwood and photographs nature wherever she goes.
Her pictures have subtued colors, and in her art, things often are not as themed.
Wieslawa Contoski uses photographs to make collages which express her life and learning. This month, Contoski won second prize in Collage 87, a competition in Seattle sponsored by Pacific Fine Arts. About 600 participants submitted 1800 slides.
Contoki was born and educated in Poland. She has been in the United States for 17 years. She received master's degrees in Middle Eastern studies and international law from Jagellonian University in Cracow, Poland, where she concentrated on Middle Eastern art forms.
Her art has striking juxtapositions of nature scenes, which she often uses for background, cut-out shapes and sometimes other relevant objects.
Her award-winning collage is composed of a dark forest background—several nearly identical side-by-side photos that look like a mirrored accordion. Suspended in the dark forest are two faces, and in between them a mask Contoski said she used a scarf and air of magic about them. She developed a concept for the collage from dreaming in her childhood, she said.
She used two models for the collages she submitted for the competition — a married couple from Philadelphia, who she met through an exchange of letters. Contoski said she thought their faces were unripe.
"You walk through the dark woods and suddenly - two faces staring at you."
Contoski also has done other artwork. Her paper cuttings have been published as illustrations in two
"You could rarely use the human face the way I did in so many pictures," she said.
books and one magazine. Contoski said her work with collages offered more versatility than other types of photography or art.
"It gives you the possibility to visualize what you say, what you imitate."
Her collages, she said, are basically her memory and imagination worked through a lens. She has been taught about the past and has done collages for 1½ years.
She was trying to expose more than one scene on each frame of film, but she didn't like the effect because the images turned out too flat. So, to give her pictures more depth, she started making collages. She likes her collages to have a three-dimensional effect, she said.
The idea to do collages came to her by accident, she said.
Contoski keeps a small collection of leaves because she likes their colors
Contoski plans many of her collages to give illusionary effects and uses a reversed horizon as one technique to achieve those effects. In one collage, two photographs of a lake are turned vertically and placed side-by-side as background. The lake is then pointed next to a woman, who is posing like a tree, another reversed horizon, a tree's branches look like a woman's hair.
and shapes and likes to use them in her pictures. She also like driftwood, large, dark and oddly irregular wood, the ceiling in a corner of her home.
Contoski said she thought subdued colors were more interesting to work
with than bright colors. She tries to stress the hues of similar colors and often organizes her collage to show a color graduation. She also pays a lot of attention to shapes.
When she makes a collage, she feels that she uses her imagination to the fullest, she said.
"I believe there's a need for
a person being to express himself or
himself."
Contoski tries to express her own life in her collages so that other people can relate to it, too. Some of her collages deal with death.
"Each one of us has a limited life, and you may at least try to express it in photos," she said.
KU, Lawrence offer events for Halloween
By BRIAN BARESCH
Staff writer
So what's up for Halloween this weekend that won't cause tooth decay?
On campus, the feature event of the weekend is the University Symphony Orchestra's annual Halloween concert at 8 p.m. Saturday in Hoch Auditorium. Orchestra members wear costumes for the concert, and the music is appropriate to the holiday.
On the program will be the overture to "Don Giovanni" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, "Funeral March of a Marionette" by Charles Gound, "Hallowen" by Charles Ives, "The Witch's Ride" by Engelbert Humperdink, "The Ritual Fire Dance" by Manuel de Falla, "The Noon Witch" by Antonin Dvorak and "Night on Bald Mountain" by Modest Moussorgksy.
Tickets will be on sale at the door for $1. Proceeds will benefit the Pi Kappa Lambda scholarship fund.
Conductor Jorge Perez-Gomez will be joined by graduate conducting students in leading the 72-piece orchestra.
KANU-91.5 FM's monthly Goodtime Radio Revue will perform Saturday night at Liberty Hall, 642 Massachusetts St., featuring various music styles by area artists as well as the Imagination Workshop, KANU's radio theatre troupe.
The Novellas, a Lawrence band, will play what they call "guitar party rock" n' roll," with four guitars and one drummer. The Liberty Hall Contemporary String Section then will shift to acoustic folk music, and Mary Sue Wade will sing jazz and blues.
The Imagination Workshop also will perform several comedy skits.
perform a comedy sale.
Tickets are $3, on sale at the
Liberty Hall ticket office.
Several events are scheduled for Mount Dread, in the Kansas Union tomorrow and Saturday. The Student Union Activities movies will be "Evil Dead II," at 3:30, 7 and 9:30 p.m., tomorrow and Saturday in woodruff Auditorium and "The Dead Zone," at midnight both nights. Tickets are $2, except for the afternoon shows, which are $1
Also, a pumpkin carving contest will take place in the Union lobby from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. tomorrow, providing the pumpkins and knives.
Nearby in the lobby, for $1 one can be photographed in a coffin, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The Masque Executorian will play all takers in a simultaneous chess "axe-hibition." Rick Hodges, wearing a hood and carry an axe, faces the chess against anyone who dares stick his neck out. without charge.
Showing up in Halloween costumes to Saturday's football game against the University of Oklahoma could pay off. Four students with the most creative costumes will win a Braniff airline ticket each.
Another costume contest will take place in the Wescoe caterpillar from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Prizes are free delicHI tnals, and all entrants will receive a package of candy while supplies last.
For children, the Seen-To-Belis players will perform "Witches! Witches! Witches!" at the Lawrence Arts Center, Ninth and Vermont streets, at 4 and 7:30 p.m. tomorrow, 1 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. tomorrow, 2 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Tickets are $2.50 in advance and $3 at the door.
"Witches! Witches! Witches!" is one-hour program, featuring two plays by Ric Averill.