Artist ~ Simon Allen ~ Providence

Artist’s name: Simon Allen 

Shop name: Turrim Studio 

Website: turrimstudio.com 

Instagram: si_mon_allen 

1. Tell us about your work 

My work has been split between personal and client, and in the past few years the client work has picked up enough to be the majority of what I make creatively. But I have been fortunate to have quite a bit of creative freedom with many of these projects; it's great to be able to bring my own ideas to a project and not sacrifice too much by the end of it all. A lot of times with people in the freelance field, you end up having to be such a counterfeiter; taking cool stuff from art history or from the now and apply it to a marketing campaign for company x selling x. It's a real luxury when you can create the visuals with room to stretch, and not have a client screaming they want it to look more like Shepard Fairey! 

2. Is there a story behind the name of your business? 

I think like any naming process, it is kind of cringey and cheesey. I was having my cards read around the time I was about to leave Chicago, which had been my home for 7 years at that time, and i was going to move back to the East Coast to make a film and start my business. My friend read my cards and the 'future card' was the Tower, which had an illustration of lightning striking a tall castle tower sending its residents into the air to their deaths. It's a card that can be bad or good if I remember correctly, but essentially it's about exploding something to make room for what's next. That idea resonated with me, like how we build up these precarious structures in our lives, and how they keep us from doing what we should do. From a Futurist standpoint, knocking these things down frees us and lets us advance. So that image of the tower has stayed with me and inspired me, and it was so well-timed at a moment I was leaving a city I loved with friends some of whom i wouldn't see again. The word 'turrim' is an old word for tower. That's all. 

3. Where do you draw your inspiration? 

From an early age I was watching tapes my dad recorded off TV of old Donald Duck and Betty Boop and those hyper-fluid animations have been a visual backdrop my whole life. When I went to art school I started paying attention to how composition worked, looking at painters like Botero and Manet. Those images are so tightly structures, sometimes like the subjects are trying to fit inside the frame. That kind of artifice spoke to me, ontop of the way those painters replicated light and color and proportion. 

4. How long have you been in Rhode Island? 

We moved here in 2017, I followed my partner here as I was working on the post-production of my short film "Mother's Peak". When we first visited to look at apartments we actually hated the city, it was so strange, because when we finally moved here we flipped 180 degrees. It was like we had seen a Providence form another, darker dimension. The first week we spent here we were making small meals in our new kitchen, eating on top of boxes, drinking cans of beer, watching the street outside our apartment, walking to downtown every night, loving everything. It was total bliss. 

5. What do you {heart} about Rhode Island? 

Rhode Island reminds me of my home state, New Jersey. There are many worlds in RI, there are rural untouched regions, then there are industrial parts next to beautiful metropolitan areas. The people here are idiosyncratic, regional, proud, and have a great sense of humor. I still don't understand why it's called the Ocean State... Aren't all coastal states Ocean States? 

6. Favorite place to take out-of-towners? 

We try to get people to a handful of places we love. One place is Max Formal's, Paul and his wife Debbie have been running this place for decades and have mint condition clothes form the 1960's. The main attraction there is Paul will take you on a tour of the whole building if you're lucky and show you his vast collections of art and vintage goods. Another place we always go to is Taconazo, a great hole in the wall taco spot. 

10. Any advice for new/wannabe makers? 

I think like with anything, have a rough understanding of why you are doing what it is you're doing, and what your intention is. Investigating your own intentions is crucial to growing and avoiding making the wrong work.