Welcome to my online portfolio and biography, with images of my drawings, installations and hot glass designs
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JILLALLAN
Jill Allan is a Vancouver Island artist living in the traditional territory of the lÉ™k̓ʷəŋən speaking peoples; the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations. She travelled to Ohio in 2011 to undertake her MFA at Bowling Green State University and graduated in 2013. She has worked to design, make and promote her own work as an artist since graduating from ACAD, Calgary in 1999. I love the idea of crossover between these different approaches to working.’ She loves to travel and has participated in residencies in Alberta, Germany, Tennessee, and New York State. Her work can be found in the collection of ACAD Calgary, The Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Edmonton, the Corning Museum of Glass New York, Kirkwood Community College Iowa, and the Canadian Craft Museum, Vancouver. In addition to maintaining her art practice Jill has worked as an arts administrator, a curator, and an educator.​
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'Working in the studio is my most vigorous physical and conceptual incubator; one idea leads to the next and so on. While much of my inspiration comes from drawing, ultimately, the work is about light. Through drawing, I find the forms that I want to realize three dimensionally, and with glass, I can make that form with light. Glass possesses fascinating material properties and interacts with light to reflect and refract, to focus and project, to distort, magnify and ‘minify’, or to amplify and absorb that light. My work as an artist is to use not just the glass, but also the light and the optical trickery of glass to create work that perplexes the eye, piquing the viewer’s curiosity. I like the idea that some pieces need to be handled to be understood visually and enjoy this connection between the hand and eye of the viewer, nodding to my haptic process as a maker.' - Jill Allan
Curriculum Vitae
Education
2013 MFA - BGSU, Ohio, USA
1999 BFA - ACAD, Calgary, Canada
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Professional Experience
2020-24 Alberta Craft Council Exhibitions Coordinator
2016-20 ACAD, School of Craft and Emerging Media,
Glass Area, Calgary Canada
2014 KCC, Humanities Department, 3D Arts, Glass, Iowa
2013 KCC, Humanities Department, 3D Arts, Glass, Iowa
BGSU, School of Art, 3D Art Area, Glass, Ohio
2012 BGSU, School of Art, First Year Studies, Ohio
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Exhibitions
2024 Interrupted Bubble, The Works Festival, Edmonton, CA
2023. Water Studies, Kulturkollektiv Goetheschule, Lauscha DE
Northern Lights Exhibition, Duncan McLelland Gallery
St Petersburg, FL, USA
2020 Bluestockings Feminist Artists Collective, Coe College
Gallery, Cedar Rapids, IA, USA
2019 Spotlight, Alberta Craft Gallery, Calgary, CA
2018 Crash Currents, Gilded Pear Gallery, IA, USA
2017 Milestones, Dorothy Uber Bryan Gallery, BGSU, OH, USA
Finding Common Ground - Making Treaty 7 Cultural
Society, the esker, Calgary, CA
2015 Design in Canada Outstanding Achievement From British
Columbia House Gallery, Canadian High Commission,
London UK
2014 {sic} In Transit, Iowa Hall Gallery, Kirkwood Community
College,Cedar Rapids, IA, USA (solo)
2013 Winter Light Iowa Hall Gallery, Kirkwood Community
College, IA, USA (solo)
Aperture, MFA thesis exhibition, Wankelman Gallery,
BGSU, OH, USA (solo)
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Awards and Artist's Residencies
2024 Edmonton Arts Council, Grants for Individuals and
Collectives, Stream 2
Firehall Glass Studio - AIR - Greeneville, TN, USA
2023 Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Visual Arts and New
Media Individual Project Grant
Edmonton Arts Council, Grants for Individuals and
Collectives, Stream 1
Kulturkollectiv Goethschule - AIR - Lauscha, DE
2020 Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Visual Arts and New
Media Individual Project Grant
2019 Canada Council for the Arts, Explore and Create Grant
2014 Commissioned to make and install a public artwork for
Washington Regional Educational Center, Kirkwood
Community College, Iowa
2012 Dr Alice E Wilson Fellowship Canadian Federation of
University Women
2011 Katzner Fund Graduate Research Grant BGSU, Ohio,
USA
Tuition Waiver and Graduate Stipend, BGSU, Ohio, USA
2009 Project Grant – Individual Art Awards, BC Arts Council,
Canada
Artist-in-Residence, Alberta College of Art and Design,
Canada
Honourable Mention Outside the Box Cheongju Craft
Biennale, Korea
2007 B.C. Creative Achievement Award, Achievement
Foundation, Canada
2006 Artist Residency, Corning Museum of Glass, Corning,
USA
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Lectures
2022 Demonstrator, Glass Art Society Conference, Tacoma,
WA
2014 Presenter, Scientific Glassblowers Society Midwest
Section Meeting Iowa City USA
2012 Artist Lecture, Fireworks Group Exhibition Seymour
Gallery, North Vancouver, Canada
2009 AiR Lecture, ACAD , Calgary, Canada
2006 AiR lecture, Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, USA
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Collections
Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Edmonton, Canada
Making Treaty 7 Foundation, Calgary, Canada
Washington Regional Education Center, Kirkwood Community College, Iowa, USA
Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, USA
Canadian Craft Museum, Vancouver, Canada
Alberta College of Art and Design, Calgary, Canada
BEAM Corporate Collection Calgary, Canada
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Publications
2022 Curious Discomfort - exhibition review of re(Form) , Studio
Magazine Volume 17 no. 2