AJA Louden
Some artists leave their signature or initials at the bottom of their work. AJA Louden has a mascot — a pineapple in sunglasses dubbed Piney P, who often appears in his murals and tapestries, and even in a playground he designed with the City of Edmonton in the Balwin community. It’s a way for Louden, a second-generation Jamaican-Canadian, to bring a fun and Caribbean flair to our often frozen landscape. It’s also a way of connecting with kids; there are even Piney P stickers and colouring books.
Louden holds workshops with children as a way of paying it forward, having developed his own artistic passion from a young age. As a child, he often saw trains covered with graffiti, like moving art galleries rolling through Cochrane, Alberta, the town close to the acreage where he grew up. What Cochrane lacked in formal art galleries, it made up for in creativity — art appeared spray-painted under bridges or woven into tapestries that hung in homes.
Louden started as a muralist, working with spray paint, inspired by those early years. Then, as the inaugural Artist in Residence for Fern’s School of Textile Craft, he realized he could wield a tufting gun like he could a can of spray paint to produce nuanced, lively results.
Now, Louden is an award-winning artist. His large body of local and international multi-media work — spanning installations, textile art, and portraits — explores in-depth topics such as the history of rural craft and the future of Black communities.
Among this work is Prairie Star Deck Tapestries, an ongoing body of work that centres Black people in the future through vibrant and hopeful imagery. Recently, Louden has been offering studio visits where he derives inspiration from conversations ranging from geology to education. Louden has prioritized connecting with others since the early days of his career, and those sparks of insight are still woven into everything he makes.
