Thomas B. Allen illustrated this album cover, "The Jazz Odyssey of James Rushing," in 1987.
By Liam Otten
August 24, 2001
Thomas B. Allen illustrated this album cover, "The Jazz Odyssey of James Rushing," in 1987. |
In the late 1950s and early '60s, Nashville native Thomas B. Allen emerged as one of the busiest illustrators in America.
His portraits, reportage pieces and story illustrations regularly appeared in Esquire, Fortune, Life, Look, The New Yorker, People and Sports Illustrated, to name only a few. Today, Allen's work can still be seen on dozens of album covers for musicians ranging from big-band leader Benny Goodman and blues singer Jimmy Rushing to gospel legend Mahalia Jackson and the influential bluegrass duo Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.
"I firmly believe that Tom Allen should be knighted as American music's patron saint to the arts," said Nashville-based recording artist Marty Stuart, a longtime admirer of Allen's evocative style. "His work is as timeless as the music itself. He is a master who can bring art to life in its most complex form, yet his genius is knowing how to present it in a way that even an 8-year-old child in a dime store can understand."
Earlier this year, Stuart helped organize an exhibition of Allen's work for Nashville's famed Ryman Auditorium, former home of the Grand Ole Opry. A version of that exhibition --"Thomas B. Allen, Innovator of American Illustration: A Retrospective" --has come to the University through Sept. 16 in the School of Art's Des Lee Gallery.
A reception for Allen --and special guest Stuart --will be from 6-8 p.m. Aug. 31 and will feature a performance by St. Louis guitarist Tom Hall.
Art school Dean Jeff Pike, who curated the Des Lee exhibition, said of Allen, "It's difficult to communicate the breadth of Tom's work. He is truly one of the great innovators of 20th-century American illustration, perhaps in part because he never really thought of himself as an illustrator, but as an artist seeking new venues for his work.
"Tom is a wonderful draftsman," Pike continued. "His work is very beautiful, very poetic and economical. Without any extraneous information, he can evoke a very specific place and time. When Tom draws a couple working in an overgrown field during a southern summer, one can almost feel the heat and the sun and the weight of the atmosphere upon them."
Pike added that Allen was particularly known for his reportage work --that is, for documenting a particular event or activity through a series of illustrations. Major projects along these lines included "Country Music Goes to Town" (Esquire, 1959), about the state of country music; "The Misfits" (Esquire, 1960), an on-location report about the making of the Marilyn Monroe/Clark Gable film; and "CBS Diary Notebook," a series of on-the-set drawings commissioned by the network.
In recent years, Allen has turned his talents to children's literature, illustrating Judith Hendershot's "In Coal Country" (Knopf, 1987) and George Shannon's "Climbing Kansas Mountain" (Athaneum, 1993) as well as his own "On Granddaddy's Farm" (Knopf, 1989).
A former chair of the illustration department at the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Fla., Allen previously held teaching positions at Syracuse University and the School of Visual Arts, both in New York, and at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, where he held the distinguished Hallmark Chair.
The Des Lee Gallery is downtown in the University Lofts building, 1627 Washington Ave. Gallery hours are 4-7 p.m. Fridays, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturdays, 1-4 p.m. Sundays and by appointment. For more information, call 621-8735.
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