ISRAEL MCCLOUD and AYANNA JOLIVET MCCLOUD
Israel Mccloud is a fourth-generation Houstonian and a sign painter by trade who also makes paintings and sculptural reliefs and performs spoken-word poetry. Mccloud’s father, also a painter, put Isaac and his brother to work in the garage of the family home in South Central Houston, turning out canvasses “assembly-line style” that would be displayed on easels in the yard and sold to those passing by. Since the 1970s Mccloud has shown his work and read poetry--often with musical accompaniment--at such venues as Midtown Art Center, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and the Community Artists Collective. In 1994, Mccloud was featured in Drive By, one of the first Project Row Houses exhibitions, with works installed on the exteriors of yet-to-be-refurbished shotguns. Mccloud’s commercial work has enlivened the windows and walls of bakeries, restaurants, and convenience stores throughout the city. In the spring of 2014, Mccloud participated with fellow veteran Houston sign painters Walter Stanciell and Bobby Ray in the Project Row House installation Monuments: Right Beyond the Site, an investigation of neighborhood community and entrepreneurship curated by the Otabenga Jones & Associates collective. Then in October 2017, he was among those featured in the exhibition For Hire: Contemporary Sign Painting in America at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft.
Israel Mccloud’s daughter Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud was born in 197X, and she carries on the family tradition as an artist, musician, and arts organizer. She received her BA in Visual and Critical Studies from the Art Institute of Chicago in 199x and returned to Houston, where she developed an artistic practice that involves site-specific installation, painting, drawing, writing, and sound. As an administrator, she directed the non-profit performance space Labotanica in a first-floor storefront in the historic El Dorado Ballroom building as part of the Project Row Houses Incubation Program from 2009-11. She also served as the Administrative Director for Nameless Sound (200x-2011), Program Coordinator for the Core Residency Program at the Glassell School of Art (2011-2013), and as Program Director, Friends of Women’s Studies at the University of Houston (2013-2019). Since 2019, she’s been Director of Education and Public Programs at the Houston Botanic Garden.
Their exhibition Trace: Site, Land & Diaspora (on view May 18 – October 5, 2019 at the African American Library at the Gregory School) “recalls and imagines local historic sites of black diaspora that are no longer in existence or that have been forgotten. Artwork in this exhibition brings visibility to these cultural sites in an attempt to recall the vital histories, memories and impact of black life in Houston. Trace includes mapping of local landscapes of forgotten African American histories; paintings centering on language as it relates to neighborhoods and poetry; and weavings/fiber pieces exploring the layout of black communities and buildings.”
Notes: Pete Gershon interviewed Israel Mccloud and Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud on June 28, 2019 at the African American Library at the Gregory School.
Further Resources:
This project was funded in part by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance