Roberta Allen is a conceptual artist, and fiction writer who explores ways in which language changes or informs perception of images.
Allen is known for her conceptual works, which combine image and text, and include drawings, collages, artist books,[2] photo/text series, sculpture and installations.
In 2014, the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in La Jolla, California, began a catalogue raisonné of her 1970s artist books.
Her interest in language is the bridge that connects these separate artistic pursuits She began writing fiction in 1979 while making conceptual art.
Her first stories were published in 1980 by Sun & Moon Press[7] in the anthology Contemporary American Fiction, along with John Ashbery and Walter Abish, among others.