Allen Caucutt has been an active and highly accomplished artist and art education leader since he started his journey at UWM in the 1950s. When he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1957, Allen was in the first class to graduate from the newly named University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Earlier in his studies, our campus was known as the Milwaukee State Teachers College, then became the Wisconsin State College before it changed for the final time in his senior year. Allen returned to UWM and earned his Master of Science degree in 1963. 

Allen has had three enduring loves in his life. The first is his wife Susan and their family. Allen and Susan met while they were both undergraduates at UWM. Susan left us this spring, but she knew about this exhibition and was, as always, very proud of her husband.  

Teaching and creating art are his other two passions. He began his teaching career in Milwaukee Public Schools and later went on to Maple Dale-Indian Hill school, where he developed an innovative, award-winning interdisciplinary curriculum that combined art education, home arts, and industrial arts. He taught his students the tools of our trade while also giving them a healthy dose of intellectual curiosity, laughter, and joy. Allen was very active in leadership roles in the Wisconsin and National Art Education Associations and contributed numerous publications to our field. A self-professed “union troublemaker,” Allen fought for the rights of students and teachers to have healthy and productive lives in schools. He continues his lifelong commitment to social justice work to this day. In his career, Allen mentored over 160 student teachers, which is another way his legacy lives on. Art education in Wisconsin would not be what it is today without his many contributions. To round out his teaching career, he taught with us here at UWM as a Senior Lecturer until he finally retired after more than fifty years teaching!  

Allen has created over 160 public works of art and over 1600 collectors have acquired paintings and sculptures both in the US and abroad. He was a featured artist on Channel 10 in the 1980s and has won awards too numerous to mention in the space of this bio. 

About Allen’s work, James Auer, former art critic for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel aptly wrote, Caucutt’s “good-natured metal figures provide a witty visual statement. (His) sculptures are, in the main, gentle commentaries on human foibles and social injustices. There is a Chaplinesque pathos about many of his pieces –a highly personal emphasis on the immense stretch between human ambition and the average person’s potential.”  Allen is not your average person and has certainly lived up to his potential. The subjects of Allen’s artwork range from things found in the natural world, especially flowers that he and Susie grew in their gardens, to his signature court jester. You will see the jester often in this exhibition because we love him. You will notice that the jester lives life to its fullest, just like Allen himself.