Olney Gleason is pleased to share details of Theodora Allen’s Shooting Star VIII (2026), a site-responsive commission now on view at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Reaching 45 feet high, the work is installed across three floors of windows in the museum’s main elevator stairwell and was created as part of the Art Everywhere initiative to coincide with a major museum expansion.
In Shooting Star VIII, licks of stylized flames trace the path of a comet as it falls toward Earth. At its center, a hand extends a flowering apple branch—a harbinger of spring. Across cultures, shooting stars are seen as good omens. In Celtic lore, apple blossoms signify longevity and rebirth. As a flowering tree closely associated with the Ozark region, this ancient symbolism is entwined with the landscape that surrounds Crystal Bridges.
Drawing on symbols both personal and universal, Theodora Allen’s paintings reflect on the life cycles of nature and culture: destruction, transformation, and renewal. Born in 1985 in Los Angeles, Allen received her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2014 and her BFA from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, in 2009. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Residency in 2011. She has staged solo exhibitions at Huset for Kunst & Design, Holstebro, Denmark; Driehaus Museum, Chicago; and Kunsthal Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark, among others. She has participated in large-scale group exhibitions at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, Arizona, and she is the subject of a monograph published by Motto Books. Her work is collected by the Dallas Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
