AJA Louden
Amiskwaciwâskahikan
(Edmonton, Atla.)
AJA Louden, Mother with Okra, Saskatoon Berries, 2024. Yarn, cosmic dust, polyester, felt, 122 x 200 cm. Photo: Blaine Campbell. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.
Studio: How would you describe your approach to your medium? What made you choose it?
AJA Louden: My understanding of image and form started with painting, and later as I became interested in graffiti and muralism, spray paint became my tool of choice as a visual artist. My approach to textiles has a somewhat painterly feeling because of this. With the cut pile tufting I use, the individual end grains of yarn assembling to form an image reminds me of the individual particles of atomized paint emitted from a spray can overlapping and blending to create a painting.
Textile art found me through a residency at Fern’s School of Craft, run by Fern Facette, a local Master Weaver whose presence is a gift for our city. Painting was my full time practice and I was looking for another creative outlet that wasn’t tied to my work. Fern showed me the ropes and I quickly became enthralled with the way that yarn captures and holds light, and the ability to carve deep into the image surface, creating sculpture. After falling down the proverbial rabbit hole, I have no interest in escaping this sweet multiverse of craft!
AJA Louden, Daughter with Elm, Birch, Piney, 2024. Yarn, cosmic dust, polyester, felt, 123 x 200 cm. Photo: Blaine Campbell. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.
S: How would you describe yourself, personally and professionally?
AL: I am interested in futurism and the way that speculative fiction can help us, as communities and as a species, imagine new roadmaps to the future. Much of popular culture includes representations of dystopic futures, which is valuable for calling out upcoming challenges, however, if you’re driving a car and only looking at the ditch, it’s probably where you’ll end up. Looking for roadmaps to future utopias, and sharing fragments of those roadmaps when I find them, is part of why I believe I’m here. I love the way that art can be used to record and share ideas across space and time.
Collaboration is important to me personally and professionally; I’ve benefited immensely from mentorships during my life and career, and I regularly offer mentorship to other artists, both formally and informally. I like to travel, love to eat, and am enamoured with the unsettling feeling of a paradigm shift.
AJA Louden, Shame, 2024. Yarn, cosmic dust, polyester, felt, 202 x 140 cm. Photo: Blaine Campbell. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.
S: What inspires you?
AL: I experience a close relationship between flavour and colour, so many of my colour palettes are inspired by novel tastes. The pursuit of knowledge is a rich source of motivation, and I find epistemology itself to be endlessly fascinating. I sometimes listen to music, audiobooks and podcasts while I work, in an attempt to occupy just enough of my mind to stop me from getting in the way of the work. I am enlivened by the medium and tools themselves, and the endless array of possibilities and paths that a blank frame offers! I love living on the Prairies and find so much inspiration in the natural world, particularly among flora (I spent some time in university focused on botanical studies).
AJA Louden, Solarpunk Dalia, 2023. Yarn, cosmic dust, polyester, felt, 97 x 97 cm. Photo: Blaine Campbell. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.
S: What do you see as your contribution to the field of your craft?
AL: I hope this will become more clear to me over time. Right now, I’m focused on building my skills and knowledge, and sharing my work and the in-depth process behind it, in the hopes that some demystification will encourage others to explore craft and find new connections, both to self and others, through their work.
AJA Louden, Solarpunk Rose, 2023. Yarn, cosmic dust, polyester, felt, 71 x 71 cm. Photo: Blaine Campbell. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.
S: What wisdom do you want to impart to younger makers?
AL: There’s so much value in understanding the history of a medium, even when making work about the future. Building skills and realizing a vision involves sacrifice and devotion. Being devoted to a craft in a variety of ways can help keep inspiration, connection, and opportunity flowing. This should include practicing your craft, but also may involve writing or making videos about your process, showing your work, sitting on boards that advocate for the things you are passionate about, organizing community gatherings so that like-minded (and perhaps introverted) people can connect and build on one another’s strengths, mentoring others, nominating your peers for awards, investing in the work of others you admire, working in an administrative capacity to support your craft. There is so much work that goes into supporting a healthy arts community, and not all of it is about making things! I see art as not just a singular process or artifact, but as a way of engaging with and offering energy back into the world we share.
AJA Loden
instagram: @ajalouden
website: https://www.ajalouden.com/
This article was published in the Fall/Winter 2024-2025 issue of Studio Magazine.
