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Announcing the 2015 Silver Dollar Society Gift

Each year, The Rockwell’s Silver Dollar Society votes to choose a new piece of artwork to be part of the permanent collection.

This year, Curator of Collections Kirsty Buchanan set forth three options; The Silver Dollar Society voted in-person at The Annual Recognition Event on September 25, 2015.

While all three proposed artworks were seen as essential in growing The Rockwell’s collection, Tumbleweed by Bale Creek Allen won by a landslide vote. The sculpture is now on view on the third floor. 

This sculpture was created by taking an actual Texas tumbleweed, casting it in bronze, and finishing it with a dark red patina. This bronze will add to and enhance The Rockwell’s small collection of American sculpture, which is a specifically-targeted area for developmental focus. This contemporary sculpture enhances our existing collection of art of the American west, and enables organic transitions between that traditional genre and conceptual art of the 21^st century.

Bale Creek Allen was born into a family of artists in Los Angeles. His childhood was spent around the work of such notable contemporary artists as Edward Ruscha, Bruce Nauman, and William Wegman. Allen was the first recipient of a four year degree from Boston’s prestigious School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Currently a resident of Austin, Texas, he has served as an adjunct professor of art at The University of Texas, Texas Tech University, the University of St. Louis, and California State University. 

Allen is a conceptual artist who is proficient in a variety of media including bronze, oil, neon, wood, photography, and spoken word. The Tumbleweeds series is one of Allen’s most celebrated bodies of work, blending representational shapes found in nature with unnatural man-made patinated finishes. 

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