Biography of:
Marla Allison
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Marla Allison (Laguna Pueblo) attended Santa Fe's Institute of American Indian Arts earning her degree in three-dimensional art in 2000. She lives and works in Laguna New Mexico. Alison’s work explores the boundaries of contemporary American Indian art and modernity. She strives to keep her work traditional yet progressive; reinterpreting her Laguna Pueblo heritage in a way that's fresh, inspiring and has universal appeal. Allison explains that her paintings are a direct window into her views.
Says Allison, "I am moved by technology, evolution, and adaptation. The comparison of past to present, other artists, and worldly ideas of culture and social behavior of both human and animal inspire me. The most influential concept that I try to include in my artwork is my culture and the land that I have been raised in Laguna, NM."
She successfully combines her own narratives on modern cubism, form, brilliant color, life experience and emotion into her paintings. This is evident in the 20th century artists who inspire her and work; Pablo Picasso, M.C. Escher, Diego Rivera, Jean Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol.
Allison's multi-media art work, "Entertainment of a Storyteller", won first place in the mixed media painting division of the 2008 Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market. In that same year, she also won the inaugural Eric and Barbara Dobkin Award for Innovation at SWAIA Indian Market in Santa Fe, New Mexico for her painting titled “Mother.” This piece is now in the Heard Museum’s permanent collection. Allison’s work was also accessioned in to the collection of the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture (MIAC) in Santa Fe, NM. Most recently, she was given a residency at the School for Advanced Research on the Human Experience (SAR) in Santa Fe, NM for receiving the Eric and Barbara Dobkin Native Fellowship for Women, which will be completed in 2010. Her works are in many private collections.
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HEARD MUSEUM
