About Allan
I grew up immersed in art, design, and creativity. My dad was a trained graphic designer and fine artist with a home studio filled with curiosities and wonders. He would create works of art late into the night to the ambient songs featured on the radio program Musical Starstreams. I would often go out into the backyard studio with my brother Jonathan to see what he was creating, and we would immediately be teleported to a new world. In the studio he would show us the ‘Megatron’ (a large disc-like spaceship), introduce us to ‘Andro’ (a long black android-alien with a formless face), and tell ancient stories about ‘The Hand’, which was a claw-like skeletal hand made of organic material…belonging to a creature from the adepts! These, of course, were the realistic found object models that he created and put on display for us to see and study, all the while telling us stories of their history and intrigue. We would always head back to bed stirred with fascination and excitement.
Years later I went off to college, but never forgot those impressionable moments in my dad’s art studio. Fast forward to finals week at UCLA. After an exhausting week of finals prep, I needed to take a mental break from my studies. As I sat at my desk I recalled the found object sculptures in my dad’s office and started to consider how they were made. I began to deconstruct every part that made up the sculptures, and then WHAM, Inspiration hit! I pulled out my ‘everything drawer’ and started pulling random things out. I had a mini picture frame, some black clips, several BB pellets, and an assortment of screws and random things. I began to glue and screw things together and by the time I ran out of parts I realized that I had just created a miniature Time Machine (possibly with hope that I could use it to get past my finals). This was the first time that I created something without any plan or purpose, and the end product fascinated me and begged the question, “What else could I create?”