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Sculptor draws on local themes

By Meg Olson

In the early 1980s Richard Allen was creating monumental scenes from the old west out of metals in his bell foundry and art studio in North Dakota, where his work still featured in a number of banks. Then he stopped. “I got out of it and came to the ocean,” Allen said.

The ocean held onto him for 25 years during which he worked as a millwright, a commercial diver, a welder and a boat engineer. It was as the engineer for the yacht After Eight that Allen came to Point Roberts and today his love of the ocean is meeting his art in the opening of the Point Roberts Bell Company.

“I needed another challenge and I had to produce something worth producing,” Allen said of his decision to return to creating metal sculpture. “I like to work with metal because I can really see three-dimensional form.”

As it did in North Dakota, Allen’s Point Roberts work is reflective of local themes. Sunlight shimmers off the fine metal feathers of his life – sized heron and eagle. At Brewster’s restaurant, the iridescence of salmon as they leap upstream is captured in oxidized metal. “I really enjoy monumental sculpture and outdoor art,” Allen said. “I want to make a monumental piece that will knock people’s shorts off. Thirty feet tall.”

While Allen works on a series of monumental outdoor pieces representing northwest wildlife for a show this summer, he is also filling commissions for smaller indoor pieces. “I guess mostly eagles,” he said. “People really like the eagles.” He is also using metal in more utilitarian ways, transforming a kitchen with copper sheeted counters and brass panels.

Allen is also working on a new bell. “It’s a sculpture in itself,” he said. Made of steel, Allen’s bells are first crafted for sound, and then decorated with bas-relief. “I love bas-relief because I can create a whole sculpture in metal on a wall, an item,” he said.

Allen is one of the international group of sculptors featured in the ninth annual Peace Arch Park international sculpture exhibit in Blaine, running from May to September.

To be put on a mailing list for upcoming shows, or to commission a monument for your own garden, call Allen at 945-2377.