(Wichita, Kansas, 1943 - )
2000
Lithograph with brand mark on paper
42 x 32 1/2 in. (106.7 x 82.6 cm)
Collection of the Akron Art Museum
Museum Acquisition Fund
2010.6
A storyteller influenced by conceptual art, pop culture and personal experience, Terry Allen is known for complex, multi-year bodies of work employing theater, song and visual art to recount a central narrative. 'Cursor' is one of a series of sculptures and works on paper that take the form of or use cattle brands. Tools traditionally associated with the southwestern United States, the brands reflect the artist’s upbringing in Lubbock, Texas. The printer applied the edge of Allen’s electrically heated branding iron to the lithograph, singeing an image of a cursor, the arrow used to select items on a computer screen, onto its surface. The woman in the background, plucked from a photograph Allen discovered in a book published in the 1950s, appears to recoil in fear.