By HARRIET PROTHRO PENROD
Professionally, he is one of the most prominent figures in the Shreveport-Bossier arts community. Personally, this soft-spoken, gentle giant is one of the kindest humans you’ll ever meet.
A papier mache monkey covered in burlap. That’s the first “real” piece of art Bruce Allen remembers making back when he was in junior high school in Oklahoma. His art teacher liked it so much that she kept it for herself.
That was the first time – “outside of someone in my family,” he says – that he remembers being rewarded for his art. Little did that teacher know she was getting one of many incredible works created by a student who would become an acclaimed artist.
You may not realize it, but – chances are – you’ve seen his work.
Drive down the 8000 block of Line Avenue around Halloween, and the eyeball outside of Shreveport Eye Specialists will be wearing a witch’s hat. During the Christmas holidays, it’s a Santa hat, followed by a jester’s hat for Mardi Gras.
When Bruce Allen was commissioned to create the work of art that sits outside the office of Dr. Russ Van Norman, he used a photograph of Van Norman’s wife as a model for the 8-foot fiberglass sculpture.
Take a drive to Caddo Common Park – the performance pavilion in the heart of downtown Shreveport – and you will see Allen’s “artistrees.” The public art trees were designed by the team of Allen and the late Jim Hayes and were named “Diamonds for Jim” in honor of the artist.
Allen and Hayes also designed the interior at the Shreveport Aquarium, including the front lobby, Shipwreck Room, Submarine Room, Fishing Village and the bar and signage in the dining room. The pair also created an original sculpture – a large wall piece made of alloy pipes and aluminum inspired by the area’s indigenous trees and leaves – for the Bienville Parish courthouse in Arcadia.
At the R.W. Norton Art Gallery, you will find Allen’s work in the basement that has been transformed into a children’s workshop and the museum’s larger-than-life sculptures of storybooks and characters.
Take a very long drive and you can see a project Allen and Hayes created with Bill Joyce’s Moonbot Studios at Sweet! Hollywood – billed as “the world’s most extravagant candy emporium.” The elaborate store windows follow the Willie Wonka theme used in the creation of the candy store, located in the mall that houses the theater where the Academy Awards ceremony is held.
One of his favorites — “probably the best thing I’ve done” — is the four-story, 60-foot-tall wall sculpture made of recycled glass and aluminum that he and Hayes were commissioned to create for the Port of Caddo-Bossier in 2013. Representing the different modes of transportation to and from the port, the artwork reflects sunlight through the beautifully colored glass on to the huge wall.
“I enjoy making things,” Allen says on a recent spring-like day as we enjoy a delicious lunch at Kim’s Seafood No. 2. “Welding, cutting wood, painting, sculpture, whatever … I enjoy making things people can enjoy.”
That seems to be a family thing.
“My mom was always an artist,” he says. “I remember when we lived in Florida and she was always making jewelry … she made earrings out of gar scales.”
Since his father was in the Air Force, the Allens lived in a number of places before settling in Bossier City when Bruce was a freshman at Airline High School. His father’s “hobby” of working with stained glass led to Ed’s Emporium Art Glass Studio, where his parents created artwork for over 35 years.
The studio is now owned by Bruce’s youngest brother Eric, who took over after the passing of their parents — Edward and Carol Allen — in 2018.
“Yeah, we all fooled around with art,” Bruce says of his brothers (Gary, the oldest, lives in Shreveport while David is in San Antonio).
Bruce decided that he would do more than just “fool around” with art during his freshman year at Centenary College in 1971.
“When I started college, I was going to be a scientist,” says Allen, who turns 70 next week. “But differential equations about did me in so I decided to do art. Art made sense to me after that.”
He graduated in 1975 with bachelor’s degrees in art and math and interned at the Meadows Museum of Art during its inaugural year in 1976. Allen started graduate studies at the University of Wyoming in 1978 and – after a year of travel in Germany on a Rotary fellowship – got his master’s of fine arts in printmaking and sculpture in 1981.
Two years later, he returned home – and back to Centenary College, where he became an art instructor and would spend the next 37 years. As fate would have it, his friend Jeff Hendricks would also return in 1983 to teach at Centenary, where the fraternity brothers created the Centenary Film Society.
“It started out as a student organization,” Allen says of the film society, “and then community members became interested.”
Once it became community-oriented, the film society grew into what is now the Robinson Film Center.
Allen’s love of art (and art history) coupled with Hendricks’ passion for film led the two to take students on annual trips to Paris. Throw in Allen’s annual student trips to Wyoming (a result of his working at the Cheyenne Frontier Days Old West Museum during his graduate school days) and you’ve got a pretty busy schedule.
“I’d go to Paris in May, come back for a couple of weeks and then go to Wyoming for a few weeks,” recalls Allen. “Then, pretty soon, it was time for fall classes to start.”
Things have slowed down quite a bit for Allen, who retired in 2020 as chairman of Centenary College’s Department of Art and Visual Culture – but that doesn’t mean he isn’t busy.
Since 1990, Allen has been a designer for “Christmas in the Sky” – the biennial Gala benefitting the Shreveport Regional Arts Council. Project-wise, he’s currently working on repairs to some of his downtown public art and will be traveling to Aspen to move some artwork (“I’ve been moving artwork since I was a senior in college”).
What really keeps him busy these days is family. He travels to California to see his 35-year-old daughter Arwen Byrd, who works in the film industry, as often as he can. And he and artist wife Dorothy Kristin Hanna enjoy every moment they can with their grandchildren.
“We love having them here,” Allen says of sons Clyde and Billy Hargrove and their families – wives Rebecca and Kelly and grandchildren John, Charlotte, Eliza, Nola, Holly and Ruby.
For “Papa Bruce,” life is good.
A beautiful work of art, you might say.
Contact Harriet at sbjharriet@gmail.com