Bio
Allison Underhill is an interdisciplinary artist whose work focuses on process and action. She uses primarily craft and fiber processes, and often integrates performance, photography, and videography. She is currently expanding her studio practice through Object Garden, a developing collection of handmade objects for the home. She earned her MFA in Sculpture from California State University, Fullerton and her BFA in Drawing and Painting from Azusa Pacific University. Originally from Bakersfield, CA, Allison is now based in Vista, CA. She is currently teaching at California State University Fullerton and Point Loma Nazarene University.
Statement
Allison Underhill's work explores the relationship between repetition, disruption, and meaning. In her work, she uses repeated gestures that form patterns and build structure over time. These gestures hold order, intention, and meaning as well as an openness. Patterns may shift or break, providing moments of change which ask for closer attention. These moments reveal and reform meaning. The act of making and breaking patterns becomes a way of seeing, of drawing closer to meaning both within the structure and its unraveling, both within the work and beyond it.
The work moves between making/acting and observing/noticing. Each piece is a conversation between maker and material, intention and accident, confusion and clarity. At the center is a curiosity and a desire to find something beyond form and actions. There is always an intention to achieve or communicate something, but the process resists full control. The work often takes on a form that could not have been planned. While patterns and disruption emerge through the work, they are also sought outside of it: in the life that exists around it.
At its heart, the work wrestles with truth. Human truth is shaped by experience. It is emotional, changeable, deeply personal, raw, vulnerable, and real. It is also fragile and incomplete. The other truth that exists beyond experience is whole, constant, and never fully knowable. The work seeks to acknowledge the tension between the two and slowly reconcile the former to the latter.
CV
EDUCATION
MFA, 2021, Sculpture, California State University Fullerton, CA
2019-2020, California State University Long Beach, CA (Fiber Arts, Graduate Critique, nine units transferred to CSUF for credit to MFA)
BFA, 2015, Drawing and Painting, Azusa Pacific University, Azusa, CA
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2025, pattern - seeking, Duke Art Gallery, Azusa Pacific University, Azusa, CA
2021, Work and Word, MFA Thesis, virtual exhibition (workandword.com), California State University Fullerton, CA
2018, Fragile Instruments, art department exhibition window, California State University Fullerton, CA
2015, I cannot rest., BFA Thesis, Duke Art Gallery, Azusa Pacific University, Azusa, CA
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2023-2024, Plaza Banner Project, Fullerton Free, Fullerton, CA
2022-2024, Project Blank Space, Fullerton Free, Fullerton, CA
2022, Please Wait, Saddleback Art Gallery, Mission Viejo, CA
2021, SoCal MFA Virtual 2021 Exhibition, socalmfa.squarespace.com (virtual exhibition), with Claremont Graduate University, CA
2021, CSUF MFA @ MUZEO, MUZEO Museum & Cultural Center, Anaheim, CA
2019, Graduate Critique Week, Ferreira Gallery, California State University, Long Beach, CA
2019, Craft Revolution, Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Ana, CA
2018, Now Trending: Third Annual Alpay Scholarship University Student Juried Exhibition, Palos Verdes Art Center, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA
2018, SoCal MFA 2018 Juried Exhibition, Millard Sheets Art Center, Pomona, CA, with Claremont Graduate University, CA
2014, ONE and Ten, Gallery p Three, Pomona, CA
2013, Ampersand, Gallery p Three, Pomona, CA
AWARDS
2017-2021, Millie and Dale Hallberg Award, California State University Fullerton, CA
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
2026-present, Adjunct Professor, Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego, CA
2021-present, Lecturer, California State University Fullerton, CA
2023-2024, Art Instructor, Irvine Valley College, Irvine, CA
2019, Teaching Associate, California State University Fullerton, CA