“When the apocalypse comes, what is our off-grid form of entertainment?” Sunny Allis asked themself when thinking of a project for the “River Valley Radical Futures” exhibition at A.P.E. Ltd. Gallery in Northampton this past spring.
The exhibit called on seven local artists (including me, which is how Sunny and I first met) to make artifacts excavated from a future one hundred years after the fall of capitalism. What Allis came up with was essentially anti-dystopian: huge, neon-colorful wearable sculptures that became a big draw for passersby who saw them through the gallery’s wall-sized picture windows.
“So much of what I make is about nostalgia and my childhood and cartoons and cartoon characters, and how I can create a queer and trans sort of lens for how bodies can become malleable,” Allis noted. “The wearable sculptures were a way of engaging people and viewers interactively through play, the shifting experience of bodies, and transforming their bodies and playing with the idea of body extension.”
One person, Allis said, ended up coming to sit with the sculptures every day before work. It’s that kind of connection that drives their art practice. Their trajectory has been shaped through experiences that include undergrad directing and theater design studies at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, grad school at CalArts, an apprenticeship in puppetry at Bread & Puppet Theater in Vermont, and involvement with DIY communities like the New York City–based Rude Mechanical Orchestra radical marching band.
“The Rude Mechanical Orchestra was sort of my community in New York, forty radical queer punks playing at a different parade or protest every weekend,” said Allis. “It was a great way to live there and constantly be on streets, starting giant dance parties among strangers and creating joyful energy for a protest.”
When Allis moved back to the Boston area, that sort of community connection continued at spaces such as Jamaica Plain’s Whitehaus and Spontaneous Celebrations. Allis staged a folk opera with twenty musician friends who had composed a transformation myth album during monthly Stories of our People, or SOOP, dinners where they would all cook and share their current art projects. In 2021, Allis moved to Western Massachusetts, a surprise destination that was supposed to be only a stopover during a move to Portland, Oregon, that never happened.
They’ve been in the Connecticut River Valley ever since, with a studio at the Brushworks Art and Industry building in Florence and art collaborations all over the region. Most recently, that included time with South Deerfield–based fabricator Thom Wright, which allowed for the creation of large-scale pieces like a punk slide and seesaw for their solo exhibition “We’re Riding the Same Wave” at the Amy H. Carberry Fine Arts Gallery at Springfield Technical Community College in September.
“Making the punk rock playground had been on my bucket list, and I was fortunate this year to work with Thom, a really rad friend who comes from a theater technical director and circus background,” said Allis. “I would love to find more opportunities to make these into outdoor public art spaces people can engage with.”
“We’re Riding the Same Wave” included a public gathering choreographed by Allis’s dance friends, which helped with the goal of getting people to “come together in these really fucked-up times, especially as queer and trans people.”
“We’re deconstructing reality to shape reality into what we want and into something that works for us,” said Allis. “It’s an all-ages vibe, just trying to encourage people to play and go on these rides. I’m drawn to the fun house vibe.”
Currently, Allis is part of the group show “HyperColor,” which features five artists invited to “use brilliant colors to explore spirituality, memory, intuition, time, and rebellious joy” and runs through December 18 in the Taber Art Gallery at Holyoke Community College. Their stay at the Taber Art Gallery continues in January with another iteration of the “River Valley Radical Futures” exhibition.
“With the ‘Radical Futures’ wearable sculptures, it felt good to be back to my art zone, the Bread & Puppet experience, which was my introduction to using cardboard and papier-mâché to make large-scale puppets for parades and pageants and protests,” said Allis, who laughed thinking about the different aesthetic that evolved from the Bread & Puppet training. “My work is definitely in more of a super colorful, fluorescent neon ’80s space, sort of a Pee-wee’s Playhouse low-key, subversively queer space of puppetry.”
That aesthetic has as much to do with their childhood in the Boston area as it does with their years in LA and every artmaking experience in between. But coming to Western Massachusetts uncovered another potential inspiration: Allis learned their ancestors had lived in the area since the 1600s, and some had even been involved in artmaking themselves in the form of intricately decorated wooden chests.
“Basically it’s been a trip to move here and find all this deep ancestry. I taught a course called Puppets, Parades, and Protests at Hampshire College last year, and having all these uptight, white, not super happy academic ancestors from Amherst and then becoming a professor in Amherst felt like a funny non-coincidence. I teach this class in a totally insane, queer-subversive way, which I think is a breath of fresh air to the lineage. It’s like medicine for your ancestors.”
Allis is leaning into the “very ironic and funny” trajectory that ended up leading to their familial reconnection.
“I had to leave and go to the West Coast and be out there a while, come out as queer and trans, and come back in my own way and have my own identity that’s connected to this place where I get to be a freak basically and leave my preppy roots behind,” Allis said. “And I want to keep making weird art that brings people joy.”
