Artist Conversation for New Suns with Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud & JD Pluecker

“There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns” – Octavia Butler

Framing explorations of space, geography, mapping, and land/waterscapes, especially of the African diaspora, New Suns in Lawndale’s Cecily E. Horton Gallery features new installation, painting and drawing by Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud.

More info here.

Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud views her creative practice and environmental advocacy as forms of stewardship. She creates art about the environment in relation to the African diaspora and examines broader themes around memory, geography, spatial studies, and materiality. Ayanna has rooted her practice in the Americas, participating in exhibitions and residencies in the U.S., Caribbean, and Latin America. Working at the intersection of advocacy, narrative change, and creativity, Ayanna develops frameworks for new ways of imagining and advocating for water, nature, and people in greater Houston through the lens of climate resilience and environmental justice. In her leadership at Bayou City Waterkeeper, Ayanna advances a collaborative vision for water justice in greater Houston through wetland protection, urban water management, flood mitigation, and water quality. Ayanna is a fourth-generation artist and native Houstonian and is inspired by the people, culture, ecology, and the seemingly banality of Houston and the Gulf Coast.

JD Pluecker works with language, that is, a material thing, a thing of life and history. Her undisciplinary work inhabits the intersections of writing, history, translation, art, interpreting, bookmaking, queer/trans aesthetics, non-normative poetics, language justice, and cross-border cultural production. They have translated numerous books from the Spanish, including Antígona González (Les Figues Press, 2016), Trash by Sylvia Aguilar Zéleny (Deep Vellum Press, 2023) and In Defense of Common Life: The Political Thought of Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar (Common Notions, 2024). JD’s book of poetry and image, Ford Over, was released in 2016 from Noemi Press, and in 2019 Lawndale Art Center supported the publication of the artist book, The Unsettlements: Dad. From 2010-2020, she worked as part of the transdisciplinary collaborative Antena Aire and from 2015-2020 with the local social justice interpreting collective Antena Houston. JD edits chapbooks with Ugly Duckling Presse’s Señal series, is a recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writing Grant, and has exhibited work at Blaffer Art Museum, the Hammer Museum, Project Row Houses, and more. More info at www.jdpluecker.com and www.antenaantena.org.

 Images courtesy of the artists.