June 13th - July 5th, 2026
Gallery open hours are Saturdays and Sundays, 12-5pm & by appointment (reach out to an artist)
Programming This Month
Saturday June 13th, 6-10pm
Opening Reception, Second Saturday
Closing Day Event - time is a shapeshifter
July 5th - Daytime
Closing Day Event - typograffi
July 5th - Nighttime
Room 1
is, Show Announce, photograph
is, Blank Alternate - Show Announce, photograph
is, Artist Event - Sip & Craft, photograph
time is a shapeshifter
Curated by Angela Lynn Tucker
Featuring works by Angela Lynn Tucker, Angie Jennings, Annie Moran, Cori Pillows, Donna Duplantier, Isabelle LaFleur, Jasmín Mara López, LaVonna Varnado Brown, Luisa Dantas, Sanaa Msemaji, Sha’Condria “Icon” Sibley, and Soraya Jean-Louis
time is a shapeshifter brings together twelve women of color artists from across Louisiana whose work explores ancestry, archives, the body, spirituality, landscape, and the nonlinear ways we experience time. Presented by The Front and supported in part by a Community Partnership Grant from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, the exhibition will be on view June 13 through July 5, 2026.
Featuring: Angela Lynn Tucker, Angie Jennings, Annie Moran, Cori Pillows, Donna Duplantier, Isabelle LaFleur, Jasmín Mara López, LaVonna Varnado Brown, Luisa Dantas, Sanaa Msemaji, Sha’Condria “Icon” Sibley, and Soraya Jean-Louis.
“we are sudden / and forever” — Sonia Sanchez
What does it mean to live long enough to watch history repeat itself?
Curated by artist and filmmaker Angela Lynn Tucker, time is a shapeshifter centers women artists 40+ whose practices have developed through decades of making, witnessing, and surviving. These are artists who have been working through the long questions across long timelines—without waiting for permission, visibility, or recognition. The exhibition emerged from a simple observation: some of the artists with the deepest insights into our current moment are often the least represented in contemporary art conversations.
Time is difficult to define. It moves incredibly fast and incredibly slow at the same time, and yet it causes so much change. Still, history folds back on itself, repeating. time is a shapeshifter lives inside that paradox—the feeling of being caught within something that won’t stop moving and won’t stop returning.
In Louisiana, the past is never fully past. Histories of migration, environmental change, race, labor, family, and faith remain present in everyday life. The works in this exhibition move between abstraction and the literal, personal memory and collective history, asking viewers to consider how meaning is made when certainty is no longer available.
@tuckergurl - Angela Lynn Tucker
@happypuddle - Angie Jennings
@annie__moran - Annie Moran
@Thecorecreations - Cori Pillows
Donna Duplantier
@thecosmicofficiant - Isabelle LaFleur
@JasminMara - Jasmín Mara López
@arijino.artistry - LaVonna Varnado Brown
@joluproductions - Luisa Dantas
@sanaamsemaji - Sanaa Msemaji
@icontheartist - Sha'Condria "Icon" Sibley
@ancestralalchemyarts - Soraya Jean-Louis
Room 2
keion hennessey sittin' up in this room tryna share my vulnerabilities as well as i share my nudes, Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 inches, 2023.
HIDDEN
keion hennessey
HIDDEN thrusts to the forefront characteristics of our psyches- and our phones, that we attempt to hide, mask, or dissociate from. this series explores the psychological depths of sacral energy by eloquently exposing what lies beneath our bolted behaviors. cultivated by perseverance and presented with vibrant hues, the series shows how our experiences suffuse the mind and body.
keion is a cute, queer, quiet riot, with a never nice, always sweet mentality. sporting a wicked sense of humor and toting a political science degree from loyola university new orleans, keion creates vibrant art highlighting her multifaceted and sometimes menacing nature. keion lives and creates in new orleans, where she loves to paint, play, rant, and read
Room 3
NTR VU publication: responses from Acecily Alexander, MaPó Kinnord and Martin Payton, contributors and publication cover, Book, Image
Khi Van Allen, work samples of textile work, Image
Kendrik James, work samples of illustration/painting, Image
Jabari Brown, Hurricane Tables, Furniture, Image
Show flyer, Image
Typograffi
Khi Van Allen, Jabari Brown, Kendrik James, is, Acecily Alexander, MaPó Kinnord and Martin Payton
Statement:
5.9.26
As “Ephemerist” begins to open, thoughts are now on next. We couldn’t hold on to the old, and all things transform – energy and movement being laws of life. Media hammers the idea of what we are losing while this is truly time for dreamers, builders, sculptors. In youth, I dreamt of a Black daily newspaper like USA Today, filled with word of our accomplishments.
6.5.26
Typograffi is a realization of that. We are descendants of great Black empires that are represented in New Orleans and other Black Port Cities and spaces worldwide. All are invited to play, read, talk, view and connect.
Khi Van Allen is a textile artist and designer whose work explores clothing as a form of cultural language, examining how identity, history, and power are communicated through dress. Working primarily with knitwear, natural dyes, and reclaimed materials, he combines archival research with textile experimentation to create pieces that investigate the relationship between fashion, subculture, and social systems.
Jabari Brown I am an artist and craftsman. Wood is my medium and the same has been true in my family for generations. We have built fencing from trees that grew on our land, worked at furniture building factories and remodeled kitchens and bathrooms. If working with wood is my blood then Red Cedar is my blood type.
Hurricane Tables by Jabari Brown Organic, modern, warm, bold. This passel of tables I call “Hurricane Tables”. The wood used to make the table tops were sourced from a pile of debris found alongside the road after Hurricane Ida in the Holy Cross neighborhood of New Orleans. Rescued from the land field, someone saw trash but I saw possibility. I picked up my chainsaw, hewn the log down to size, planed and sanded it, welded the brackets, attached the legs, and built 10 end tables.
The table top is Eastern Red Cedar, my favorite species of tree. Fragrant, versatile, strong and sporting a deep red hue which you may have noticed as a cedar chest or chifferobe in your grandparents home due to its ability to repel pests. This species is also known as a pioneer series tree, meaning, it is one of the first signs of vegetative life to emerge after the land has been cleared. The role it plays in the environment is understated as it holds the soil together, cleans the water and is home to many animals and insects. Translated “red stick” it is believed to be the name sake of our state's capitol, Baton Rouge. The legs are African Mahogany and were sourced from The Bank, an architectural salvage store off O.C. Haley. Not much is known about their origin and I am intrigued by their design.
Enjoy 75 years of history in each table upcycled to create a beautiful one of a kind heirloom.
Kendrik James is a Black visual artist from New Orleans working primarily in acrylic paint, charcoal, and poetry but quickly expanding his practice. He has recently graduated with his BA in Studio Arts from the University of New Orleans. Under the alias Ken That Artist, his artistic voice has been included in the city of New Orleans by participating in Sing For Hope through two painted pianos in public spaces along with a third public piano commissioned by Mark Boros. One of his public pianos, “Woodwinds, Leaves, and Calla Lilies”, can be seen at City Hall.
is: integrates experience as a performer, educator, and lover of languages along with training as an art director in the advertising field to contribute to sociocultural progress through interactive games, correspondence and artistic solutions. Leaning into the handcrafts of the women in her lineage who turned domestic decor into works of art. Investigating connection through acts of making, saving, and reimagining. Prompting connection to nature, self and other through interactive means.
NTR VU - four questions for landscape shapers, with responses from Acecily Alexander, MaPó Kinnord and Martin Payton
Currently residing in Decatur, Georgia, Acecily “Ace” Alexander and her love for writing were born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina. While her aunt believes it was earlier, Alexander wrote her first poem at age 6 and was published for the first time 3 years later.
Using an imagination almost too big for her own good and the heartbreak in her own life, she went on to write many short stories and poems as a creative writing major at the Charleston County School of the Arts -- including publishing her first book, The Crickets Know My Secret in 2006.
Alexander currently works as a freelance digital communications specialist, and hopes to publish a series of children’s books soon.
For more information or to keep up with Ace, please follow her on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/acealexa or visit acecilyalexander.com.
MaPó Kinnord grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. She apprenticed with several production potters before receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art in 1984 and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Ohio State University 1994 Arriving in New Orleans in 1995, she now serves as a Professor of Art at Xavier University of Louisiana and a board member of NCECA, National Council for the Education of Ceramic Art. A well-respected educator and artist, Kinnord has taught workshops at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine, Penland School of Craft in North Carolina, as well as the Kambe no Sato Arts Center in Matsue, Japan. She maintains a studio in New Orleans. Her production pottery, sculptures, and drawings can be viewed at https://www.mkinnordart.com/
Born in New Orleans in 1948, Martin Payton currently lives and maintains a studio in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He received a BFA from Xavier University of New Orleans, and a MFA from the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. Payton was a professor of art at Xavier University (1976 -1981), Florida A&M University (1986 -1990) and Southern University, Baton Rouge from 1990 until retirement in 2011. His recent work has been to explore the connections between the temporal forms of music and the plastic forms of sculpture. Actual and implied movement, contrast, improvisation, rhythmically orchestrated intervals, alternating dominance of shape, then space have all been employed in his expressive efforts in welded steel. Worn, discarded steel elements are used to form poetic statements around the diaspora of African history and culture while acknowledging contemporary thought and practice in visual art.
Khi Van Allen - @nella.nav / https://swimgarden.co/about-me-mobile
Kendrik James - @kenthatartist
is - @is_ing / slomediagroup.com
Jabari Brown - @brown.barry
Acecily Alexander - @acealexa / acecilyalexander.com
MaPó Kinnord - @nolamapo / https://www.mkinnordart.com/
Martin Payton - @martinpaytonla
room 4
Sanctuary: Tending the Collective
Carl Harrison Jr.
I work from the ground up, literally. My practice is rooted in a single lot in the St. Roch neighborhood of New Orleans, a family home lost after Hurricane Katrina and reclaimed, slowly, into what is now the St. Roch Community Garden. That act of reclamation is not just the origin of my work. It is the method.
Sanctuary: Tending the Collective grows out of years of tending this land alongside neighbors, elders, and the next generation of stewards. The exhibition explores what gardens hold beyond what grows in them: memory, ancestry, spiritual inheritance, and the ongoing labor of care. The works ask how we create sanctuary not as a place apart from the world, but in the spaces we build together.
Carl Harrison Jr. is a New Orleans-based artist, filmmaker, beekeeper, and community land steward whose work explores Black ecological memory, cultural heritage, and the living traditions of the Gulf South. Working across film, photography, installation, sculpture, and social practice, he creates projects rooted in the intersection of land, ancestry, and collective care. Harrison is the founder of the St. Roch Community Garden and a member of The Front.