Originally from a mill town outside of Boston, Allyn Massey graduated from the Corcoran College of Art in 1986, a recipient of the Lolo Sarnoff Award. She's had a studio in Baltimore since 1989 when she earned her M.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Rinehart School of Sculpture, and received the Amalie Rothschild Award for Sculpture and the Henry A. Walter's Traveling Fellowship.
Massey has been given residencies at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha, Nebraska, the Jentel Foundation in Banner, Wyoming, and Goya Girls Press in Baltimore and has received 4 Individual Artist awards from the Maryland State Arts Council in Sculpture and New Genre, 1992, 1995, 1998, 2002. She's shown locally at the International Sculpture Center, the Corcoran Museum, the WPA, George Mason University, Maryland Art Place, School 33, and the Contemporary Museum; and nationally at the Feldman Gallery in Portland, Oregon, Jaffe-Freide Gallery at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire; the Danforth Museum, Virginia; the Sawtooth Art Center, North Carolina; and University of Hawaii, Hilo. She was considered for the Whitney Biennial in 2000 and 2002.
Her work has been shown in Sculpture magazine, Art Papers, Link, the New Art Examiner, and Urbanite magazine, and reviewed multiple times by the Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, Washington Times, the Washington and Baltimore City Paper and Radar. Massey is currently Chair of the Art and Art History department at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland, where she teaches Sculpture.