■ Tribute to late programmer, son of beloved teacher to be broadcast on KPFA Feb. 26

Ian Allen died last month from complications from heart surgery at Stanford Hospital. He was 56.

The son of artist and educator Bonnie Weidel, who died last April, Allen was well known in the Benicia art community, especially among those who knew Weidel well.

“I got to know Ian when his mother was diagnosed with cancer,” said artist and “The Buzz” creator Les Overlock. “He taught me the value of human relationship when you think you have nothing in common.”

Overlock said after a while, he and Allen learned they had a lot in common: a love of Weidel’s art, and an understanding of the frailty of the human body, “not being able to function as we once did.”

He said when Weidel was alive, the three of them would have ice cream together on Friday nights. “After Bonnie died we would continue the tradition and watch a ‘B’ movie.”

Overlock worked with Allen to put together the memorial “Arts in the Park” last June to honor Weidel, a long-time art teacher and former Benicia Unified School District trustee, and said that Allen was the mastermind behind it. He said Allen was leafing through Weidel’s belongings and wanted a more active tribute to his mother.

Artist and poet Tom Stanton said Allen lived in Benicia for many years after moving here from San Francisco. “I remember bringing him here with Bonnie from his place on Market Street,” Stanton said.

“He was a computer ‘coder’ and made much art sound work, which he wrote in Java. I frequently loaned him equipment and discussed some tech, but mostly philosophy.”

Artist Mike Kendall said he doubted that he spent more than 10 to 15 minutes a year with Allen, but did that over several decades.

“I was doing experimental audio/video work in the early ’90s and when I started incorporating it into my sculptures, I picked up a whole new bunch of interested fans and peers,” Kendall wrote in an email to The Herald. “Ian was one of them and would usually come by once or twice a year with his mom Bonnie Weidel. He’d look around and usually strike up a conversation.”

“I think in a different society and time Ian Allen would have probably been revered as an Artist, Genius, Shaman, Teacher and More. As it was he just became known as Bonnie’s son to the many who might remember him. A part of my mind that houses creativity seems a little bit emptier with the passing of Ian and Bonnie.”

Kal Spelletich, a San Francisco-based artist, got to know Allen during Spelletich’s installation at Arts Benicia for the Arts Benicia Artist in Residence program in 2013.

“We had some laughs and good times. During a talk I gave, a clever fellow asked several probing and smart questions … I wondered, who is this thinker tucked away here in Beniica?” Spelletich said. “We gabbed and immediately started laughing and cracking jokes.

“Through his observations and questions I tweaked and changed my installation and received wonderful comments on sound, light and senses from him.”

Spelletich said that Allen loved the sounds made by the machines and robots of his installation. “We talked about trans-humanism, cyborgs and hacking humans.

“He came by the gallery several times, often with his wonderful mother. He loved my walking barbecue.

“Ian had a mischievous twinkle in his eye, meanwhile his frail body showed a side that he was suffering,” Spelletich said by email. “But intellectually and emotionally I never saw him waver … such a strong soul. It was humbling and empowering.”

Spelletich said he found out through a mutual friend, Ken Duffy, that Ian was a member of the band Negativland in the 1980s.

“I couldn’t believe it! I bought their records from the 1980s on and saw them multiple times live. They were genius rabble-rousers, true visionaries hacking and morphing culture.”

An email forwarded to The Herald by Mary Frances Kelly Poh from one of Allen’s long-time friends helped fill in some of the blanks about Allen.

“When I met Ian in 1984, he was a member of Negativland, and he continued to make music throughout his life,” wrote Sharon Jue, who said she was Allen’s friend for 31 years. “His day job was a computer programer at Unison World, where he spent many nights sleeping underneath his desk while designing the video game Underground City (one of the bestselling games in Japan in the ’80s!) and Printmaster, an early desktop publishing program.

“His interests were infinite: music, film, art, technology, computers, mathematics, physics, basically the universe and beyond. Incredibly prolific, he was constantly working on new projects, as he had a mind-boggling surplus of creativity,” Jue wrote.

Allen was involved with Negativland, a “culture jamming” experimental band that formed in 1979, from 1981-87. On his death, several major music magazines, including Rolling Stone, Billboard, Pitchfork, boingboing, Stereogum, Slicing Up Eyeballs, Laughing Squid and others posted tributes to Allen.

On a more personal note, Jue wrote that Allen “had a huge impact on my life as he had on the lives of everyone who knew him. I can honestly say that I would not be who I am today if I had not known him.”

Jue described Allen as “gifted with an incredibly brilliant and quick mind that would sputter out things at lightning speed and an insatiable curiosity that made it impossible to walk a straight line down the street.”

She wrote that Allen would always stop to look at something that interested him: a flier on a telephone pole, a window display, a concrete stamp on the sidewalk, the shape of a cloud. “He could show you beauty in the most mundane things.”

Jue said she and Allen’s brother, Pyke, are planning a memorial in mid-May, when Pyke returns from Alaska.

She also shared that Negativland is planning a tribute to Allen on Feb. 26 on the Over The Edge radio show on KPFA, midnight to 3 a.m.