The College of the Arts at UL Lafayette is proud to announce and honor Allan Jones as our 2020 SPARK Lifetime Achievement Award.  Jones was born November 19, 1940 in Fort Worth, Texas.  Born and educated in central Texas, Professor Allan L. Jones began his college career in engineering.  Discovering the campus art department altered his life.  In 1963 he received his Bachelor of Arts in painting from Texas Wesleyan College and in 1965 a Master of Fine Arts from Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California. His first teaching position was as an instructor in design and painting at University of Southwestern Louisiana in 1965.  In 1970 Jones accepted an Assistant Professor position teaching painting and printmaking at Antioch College, in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  In 1986 Professor Jones returned to USL, now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and taught intermediate painting, advanced painting, and drawing until his retirement in the spring of 2017. In 2011, Jones was the recipient of the Dr. Ray Authement Excellence in Teaching Award. 

Jones’s work has been shown nationally, exhibiting at the New Museum, New York; The Ogden Museum, New Orleans; Arizona State University, Tempe; Kohn Turner Gallery, Los Angeles; Oxford Museum, Miami, Ohio; Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; Atelier-Galerie Alain Piroir, Quebec; Casa Frela Gallery, New York; Fort Worth, Contemporary Arts Center; Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans; Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena; Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati.   He has had solo exhibitions at the Dayton Art Institute, Wright State University, Dayton; Louisville School of Art, Louisville, Lindenwood College, St. Charles, Missouri, Acadiana Center for the Arts, and the Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum in Lafayette, Louisiana. His work has also been reviewed in Art News, The Village Voice, and The Times Picayune.

The collections of MidSouth Bank of Louisiana, Yale University Art of the Book Room, Harvard University, Houghton Library; Oxford, Ohio Museum; Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; Miami University, Ohio, Chase Manhattan Bank, the New York Public Library ,and Cincinnati Public Library Rare Book Collection house Jones’s work.

Through Allan’s leadership the Department of Visual Arts grew into a more holistic department, that emphasized community and professional development, which in return established a greater national visibility for the department and the university. Allan was an early coordinator of the senior capstone courses. He encouraged seniors about the potential for graduate school along with professional opportunities both as practicing visual artists as well as other job options in related fields. 

Allan has mentored hundreds of students and scores of faculty colleagues during his thirty-six years at UL and sixteen years at Antioch College in Ohio. Exhibiting a life dedicated to the education of the Arts for over 50+ years. Jones will be formally named at this year’s SPARK honoree at the 2020 Beaux Arts Ball. He will join the ranks of our previous honorees; A. Hays Town, Elmore Morgan Jr., Joe Stewart, George Rodrigue, Keith Sonnier, Dicky Landry, Eddie Cazayoux, Herman Mhire, Raymond Goodrich and others.