A Key for NewSuns
By JD Pluecker Quarter-Moon
Gravity is commonplace compulsion. The pattern upset by new starbodies. How to re-map the new orbits. A misconception: what appears as half is better described as quarter. How the waters recede and mount, but moons revolve. An unfamiliar gal. Galaxy, pardon. A thicket of lies. Shhhh, quiet is like the moon, […] offering slivers of its potent, tide-shifting self. The internet says something about velocity but does not hold your hand reliably.
Lean
All silence says music will follow. A surface to rest upon. The surface of one thing, not another, or the other slackens to recline into the wall or the cushion. What might it mean to unwind a wooden board. Uncoiling of rings or spell for safety on a suburban street. Where the thing happened. Or where you dream of unbending. Remind self: don’t / make a labor of it.
Hole
Absence as prayer. A body responds to the elements, their feeling. Listening with the fingers, a sensory memory came first. What does the wood want, the paint. A repeated maneuver. The boring of a space in a hard surface. The puncturing of canvas. A peephole through a wall encloses a genocide. A landscape where the wall once was. A pathway through a forest as aperture. A hoot breaks through the hush of tree leaves or cricket chirps. Generous, how you pierce. Hospitable.
Blue
Swamps named for an imperial queen. Or a battlefield named for a saint. A bayou named for an animal long gone. You push aside drooping weeds to reach the bay. Or you trudge down to bayou bank, weeded or concrete or both. To submerge a foot into the murky brown. To listen to the water’s despair. Bathing in the dark / The water glowing. To hide in the depths. To sing. To escape capture, elude colonial history. Impatient blues. / Anxious blues. Her chemical song now grows faint in the distance.
Light Blue
Water flows, unperturbed. A border extended my being in time; it made things slow. It quieted language. To arrive to a stream through the bushes and send up a cry. A woman vocalizes in the woods and what is attracted or repelled by the noise. How did the word for “cry out of” become “to explore.” Mimic deer rattle. Imitate duck chuckle. Coyotes, bobcats, foxes.
Hinterland
The shouting and the tumult ceases, the din of whistles, bells, and throats dies out. A means of scouting. Does anyone move to stop the aggression. How not to, you ask. The space on the map between starshine and clay. Threshold between studio and world, corporeality in the passage. The journey to the ice of the north, the possibilities of snow.
Gold
A luxury that is not a luxury. Depends on which floor. The perch at the windowsill. The overflow. An avocado tree. Abundance. Currency. Metaphor. Heavens! Who could do justice to my feelings at this moment! You choose gold as material, as a continuity from nail to eyelid to shoe to wrist. One thing does not belong. Witch is it. Her grandmother turned chairs into thrones.
Scrape
The voyage of a blade across the surface. Its arc like bird flight or orbit. Your hand moves a machine, rotates wood into dust. The flaking of laboriously applied layers of paint. The mask to allow breath.
Center
To turn to what is inside. A shift. A reorientation caused by circumnavigation.
Owl
More the sound than the animal. The pain of the ow. Lead into a way. And this was the way of it, brethren brethren, / way we journeyed from Can’t to Can. A lion and a sheep in one body. A woman learns how to voice the hoot of the barred owl, or is it re-learns. That sound she uploads on the internet, playable, repeatable, a return.
Slant
A territory that might have been near. Could still be close by. A proximity to. The moonshadow of your body extends across the grace, grass. And when shall I reach that somewhere / morning and keep on going and never turn back and keep on going / Runagate / Runagate / Runagate.
A Legend
Ayanna, I made this key for you, or un-key. I see your work in New Suns asking: how might it be possible to re-map or anti-map or un-map through Black fugitivity and Indigenous resistance? Not to map to destroy Black and Indigenous lifeways as colonial cartography did and does but to re-map or anti-map or un-map the territory under your new sons, suns. To build the key, I identified some of your marks or gestures or motifs or colors and then tried to open these one by one. What might these mean? Not to define anything but to let language inhabit their ongoingness, the questions of those marks or motifs or gestures or colors. With gratitude for the invitation and the continuing dialogue, Jadine.
Citations
“all silence says music will follow” &; “Impatient blues. / Anxious blues. Her chemical song” – Lorenzo Thomas, “Onion Bucket”
“Black fugitivity and Indigenous resistance” – Tiffany Lethabo King, The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies
“And this was the way of it…” &; “And when shall I reach that somewhere…” – Robert Hayden, “Runagate, Runagate”
“between starshine and clay” – Lucille Clifton, “won’t you celebrate with me”
“don’t / make a labor of it” – Pat Parker, “For the white person who wants to know how to be my friend”
“extended my being in time…” – Renee Gladman, Prose Architectures
“Heavens! Who could do justice…” – Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by himself, 1789
“Listening with the fingers, a sensory memory came first” – Cecilia Vicuña, Precario / Precarious
“grandmother turned chairs into thrones.” – Zena Agha, Objects from April and May
“The shouting and the tumult ceases…” – Robert Henson, A Negro Explorer at the North Pole
“Quiet is like the moon…” – Kevin Quashie, The Sovereignty of Quiet
Index
Works listed in appearance of catalogue:
Untitled, 2024
Acrylic on wood
Landscapes that Eric Gardner, Ahmaud Arbery, and Sandra Bland could have been near (New York park; Satilla Shores, Georgia; and Prairie View garden), 2024
Photo transfer and drawing on paper
Waterways Studies, 2024
Acrylic on wood
Stars, 2024
Acrylic paint on wood
Migratory Bird Patterns and Studies for Freedom, 2024
Acrylic on canvas with punctures and marks
Stars, 2024
Acrylic paint on wood
Untitled, 2024
Acrylic on canvas with punctures and marks
Land/waterscapes and Blackness (Wetlands/Swamps and former enslaved peoples; Maryland Marshes, the Barred Owl, and Harriet Tubman; Huntsville State Park and Civilian Conservation Corps, Oleanders and Clarence Pickens; The North Pole and Matthew Henson), 2024
Photo transfer and dye on fabric
All images and catalogue design by Tamirah Collins.
Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud
She/her
www.ayannannaya.com
JD Pluecker
She/they
jdpluecker.com
“There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns” – Octavia Butler
Artist Studio Program
Established in 2006, the Lawndale Artist Studio Program offers residencies to Texas-based artists who are developing a practice in the visual and performing arts. Lawndale welcomes residents to a vibrant community of working artists, curators, critics, and patrons of contemporary art. Throughout the nine-month residency, the artists work closely with each other and Lawndale staff to develop and produce new work to be exhibited. Lawndale is pleased to announce Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud as one of our 2023/2024 Artist Studio Program participants. Major support for the Artist Studio Program is provided by Kathrine G. McGovern/The John P. McGovern Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts
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Lawndale is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center that engages Houston communities with exhibitions and programs that explore the aesthetic, critical, and social issues of our time.
About
Lawndale believes in the role of art and artists to inspire and inform the world around us. By serving as an intimate gathering place to experience art and ideas, Lawndale seeks to foster connections between communities in Houston and beyond. Lawndale presents a diverse range of artistic practices and perspectives through exhibitions and programs, including lectures, symposia, film screenings, readings, and musical performances.
Through exhibition opportunities, the Artist Studio Program, institutional collaborations, and the engagement of an advisory board comprised of artists, curators, and scholars. Lawndale seeks within its mission to support all artistic and cultural communities of Houston.
Supporters
Lawndale’s exhibitions and programs are produced with generous support from The Brown Foundation, Inc.; Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation; The Joan Hohlt and Roger Wich Foundation; The John M. O’Quinn Foundation; The John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation; Houston Endowment; Kathrine G. McGovern/The John P. McGovern Foundation; The National Endowment for the Arts; The Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation; The Rose Family Foundation; the Scurlock Foundation; the Texas Commission on the Arts; the Vivian L. Smith Foundation; and The Wortham Foundation, Inc. Additional support provided by Lindsey Schechter/Houston Dairymaids, Saint Arnold Brewing Company, and Topo Chico..
Funding for Lawndale’s exhibitions is provided by presenting sponsors, John Bradshaw, Scott Sparvero, along with sponsors Jereann Chaney, Alexa Clements, Piper & Adam Faust, Marco Hernandez, Amy Holmes, Mary Catherine & Bailey Jones, Emily & Ryan LeVasseur, Jeryn & Walter Mayer, Meghan Miller & Jeff Marin, Adrienne Moeller, Winnie & Nic Phillips, Teresa Porter, Regina & Frem Reggie, Stephanie Roman, Nicole & Joey Romano, Jessica & Blake Seff, Dr. Andre Shaw and generous gifts from the Friends of Lawndale.
Major support for The Artist Studio Program is provided by Kathrine G. McGovern and The John P. McGovern Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
