“THE ALCHEMY OF ECHOES”
on display September 4th-September 26th
ARTWORKS BY
Rick Parsons and Molly Allen
Opening Reception September4th, 4pm-8pm
The Alchemy of Echoes is a two-person exhibition featuring Molly Allen and Rick Parsons. The work exhibited by Molly is a series of intimate, surreal collage works that explore the slippage between interior and exterior, body and object, memory and environment. Drawing from architecture, design, and the uncanny, these assembled scenes operate like psychological rooms—constructed yet unstable, poetic yet precise.
Each composition balances the material logic of collage with the dreamlike syntax of the subconscious. Thinking about this work as writing or poetry, I create and seek imagery—furniture, landscape, fish, stone, drapery, flesh—that becomes estranged from its original context and reoriented into liminal spatial arrangements. Familiar elements are made strange, inviting the viewer to inhabit a space where perception is soft-edged and mutable.
Through this process, I explore place vs, space. Thinking about place as fixed and recognizable, and space as internal, shifting, and felt. These collages function as quiet thresholds between those two states. They ask: How do we architect the spaces of our inner lives? How do objects carry psychic weight? They explore personal myth making and ask what happens when the walls around us ripple like water?
The most recent collages, created during a residency at Burren College of Art in Ireland, reflect a shift in spatial rhythm and visual pairing. Immersed in a landscape dense with history and material memory, I found myself responding to a different kind of depth—one shaped by ancient stone walls, layered time, and cultural texture. These works subtly contrast the Irish landscape, and its long-held history, with the expansiveness and ever-changing West of the United States, a terrain I often work from. In these pairings, I began to trace how psychological space is shaped not only by architecture, but by the emotional legacies embedded in land.
Grounded in intuition and guided by a desire to find poetry in fragmentation, The Alchemy of Echo’s offers not answers, but atmospheres—spaces to drift in and dwell.
-M.A.
Each composition balances the material logic of collage with the dreamlike syntax of the subconscious. Thinking about this work as writing or poetry, I create and seek imagery—furniture, landscape, fish, stone, drapery, flesh—that becomes estranged from its original context and reoriented into liminal spatial arrangements. Familiar elements are made strange, inviting the viewer to inhabit a space where perception is soft-edged and mutable.
Through this process, I explore place vs, space. Thinking about place as fixed and recognizable, and space as internal, shifting, and felt. These collages function as quiet thresholds between those two states. They ask: How do we architect the spaces of our inner lives? How do objects carry psychic weight? They explore personal myth making and ask what happens when the walls around us ripple like water?
The most recent collages, created during a residency at Burren College of Art in Ireland, reflect a shift in spatial rhythm and visual pairing. Immersed in a landscape dense with history and material memory, I found myself responding to a different kind of depth—one shaped by ancient stone walls, layered time, and cultural texture. These works subtly contrast the Irish landscape, and its long-held history, with the expansiveness and ever-changing West of the United States, a terrain I often work from. In these pairings, I began to trace how psychological space is shaped not only by architecture, but by the emotional legacies embedded in land.
Grounded in intuition and guided by a desire to find poetry in fragmentation, The Alchemy of Echo’s offers not answers, but atmospheres—spaces to drift in and dwell.
-M.A.
Molly Allen;
Echos at Landing white;
2025
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Molly Allen
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Originally from the mountains of Colorado, Molly Allen is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans sculptural ceramics, image-making, and collage. She holds an MFA in Ceramics from Ohio University and a BFA in Ceramics and New Genres from Sierra Nevada College, where she graduated as Valedictorian. She also completed a Post-Baccalaureate program at the University of Montana.
Allen’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Burren College of Art in Ireland, The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Pottery Northwest in Seattle, the International Ceramics Studio in Kecskemét, Hungary, Medalta International in Canada, Mendocino Art Center, and Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts.
Recent exhibitions include a solo show at the Courthouse Gallery with the Carson City Arts Initiative, as well as inclusion in Off Center: An International Ceramic Competition at Blue Line Arts in Roseville, California, and Thinking Through Animals at the Canton Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio.
She currently lives on the shores of Lake Tahoe, where she works as a Teaching Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Art and serves as the Gallery Director at the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe.
Allen’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Burren College of Art in Ireland, The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Pottery Northwest in Seattle, the International Ceramics Studio in Kecskemét, Hungary, Medalta International in Canada, Mendocino Art Center, and Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts.
Recent exhibitions include a solo show at the Courthouse Gallery with the Carson City Arts Initiative, as well as inclusion in Off Center: An International Ceramic Competition at Blue Line Arts in Roseville, California, and Thinking Through Animals at the Canton Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio.
She currently lives on the shores of Lake Tahoe, where she works as a Teaching Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Art and serves as the Gallery Director at the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe.
Rick Parsons
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"My work uses materials as metaphor to explore the effects of environmental pollutants on the body, transforming personal responses to social and political issues into visual forms that embody emotion and meaning. Drawing on memories of the Gulf Coast of Texas, I create layered, poetic objects that connect personal history with contemporary concerns.
Materials carry symbolic significance in my work: clay represents the body, saltwater embodies both healing and destruction, and steel reflects the social and spiritual structures that shape our lives. Through processes of absorption, corrosion, and transformation, these materials mirror the ways environmental forces alter both our bodies and our communities.
Expanding beyond clay, salt, and steel, I incorporate everyday objects such as spoons, tarpaper, and heat to address consumption, industry, and environmental health. Central to my practice are the ideas of time, change, and uncertainty. Through familiar forms and seductive surfaces, I create works that invite reflection on the complex relationships between nature, industry, and human experience."
-RP
Materials carry symbolic significance in my work: clay represents the body, saltwater embodies both healing and destruction, and steel reflects the social and spiritual structures that shape our lives. Through processes of absorption, corrosion, and transformation, these materials mirror the ways environmental forces alter both our bodies and our communities.
Expanding beyond clay, salt, and steel, I incorporate everyday objects such as spoons, tarpaper, and heat to address consumption, industry, and environmental health. Central to my practice are the ideas of time, change, and uncertainty. Through familiar forms and seductive surfaces, I create works that invite reflection on the complex relationships between nature, industry, and human experience."
-RP
Rick Parsons received his BFA from Stephen F. Austin State University and an MFA in Sculptural Ceramics from the University of Dallas.
Rick's artwork focuses on the effects of environmental pollutants on the body. He uses materials as metaphor to address the looming impact of a culture dependent on diminishing resources. His current work has ben exploring these concepts through automatic writing, jazz thinking and three-dimensional form.
Rick teaches at University of Nevada Reno at Lake Tahoe and previously taught at Sierra Nevada University for 13 years. He has also served as Sculpture Program Coordinator at Anderson Ranch Arts Center and has taught at both the University of Dallas, and Colorado Mountain College. Rick has been a visiting artist at San Jose State University, Colorado College, University of Miami, and Arizona State University. His sculpture has been exhibited throughout the country and was featured in a solo show Santa Clara University. Rick's sculpture was the focus of an article in Sculpture magazine and published in the book Confrontational Ceramics: The Artist as Social Critic by Judith S. Schwartz and was featured in the documentary film "Questions of Art," by Zach Jankovic.
Rick's artwork focuses on the effects of environmental pollutants on the body. He uses materials as metaphor to address the looming impact of a culture dependent on diminishing resources. His current work has ben exploring these concepts through automatic writing, jazz thinking and three-dimensional form.
Rick teaches at University of Nevada Reno at Lake Tahoe and previously taught at Sierra Nevada University for 13 years. He has also served as Sculpture Program Coordinator at Anderson Ranch Arts Center and has taught at both the University of Dallas, and Colorado Mountain College. Rick has been a visiting artist at San Jose State University, Colorado College, University of Miami, and Arizona State University. His sculpture has been exhibited throughout the country and was featured in a solo show Santa Clara University. Rick's sculpture was the focus of an article in Sculpture magazine and published in the book Confrontational Ceramics: The Artist as Social Critic by Judith S. Schwartz and was featured in the documentary film "Questions of Art," by Zach Jankovic.