Join us at Baton Rouge Gallery for a special Sundays@4 presentation with Dr. Sharbreon Plummer that delves into how the works featured in Free as they want to be: Artists Committed to Memory can deepen our understanding of the Black southern experience through a historical lens.
Dr. Sharbreon Plummer is an internationally distributed writer, public scholar, curator and interdisciplinary artist from south Louisiana. She is the founder of AYA Thought Studio and has spent the past fifteen years shaping and facilitating transformative programs, initiatives and research that center liberation and justice through arts and culture.
Following Plummer’s discussion of the exhibition, she will sit in conversation with one of the show’s featured artists, John Alleyne, for a more present-day facing look that will still have its roots in place/geography.
As with all programming being held in conjunction with Free as they want to be, this event will be open to all with no admission fees.
About Sharbreon Plummer
Dr. Sharbreon Plummer is an award-winning writer, public scholar, curator and interdisciplinary artist. Her practice centers Black art and craft histories, memory work and southern folksways.
With 17 years of experience in the arts and culture sector, her research and thought leadership have been presented in institutions such as Newberry Library, Americans for the Arts, RISD, University of Edinburgh and The Art Institute of Chicago. Sharbreon’s writing has been published in several books, exhibition catalogs and experimental publications. She has written for Hyperallergic, Quiltfolk Magazine, TATTER Journal and many others.
Sharbreon was most recently awarded a 2025-26 Princeton Crossroads Project Arts Fellowship and Fall 2026 Artist Fellowship at ALMA | LEWIS (Pittsburgh, PA). A few of her other creative projects include her internationally distributed zine Diasporic Threads: Black Women, Fibre and Textiles and the Black Art Passport. She has organized curatorial projects such as Of Salt and Spirit: Black Quilters in the American South (2024), as well as Stitching Abolition (2022) and Mirrored Migration (2016). Dr. Plummer, alongside Dr. Jess Bailey, co-founded The People’s Quilting Bee: an international public learning forum and virtual makerspace. She is also the author of the highly anticipated publication, Stories in the Seams: A People’s History of Black Quilts and Their Makers, released by Chronicle Books in October 2026. Sharbreon is the Founder and Artistic Director of AYA Thought Studio, an arts-focused consultancy that specializes in project management, research and collection advising.
Sharbreon earned her Ph.D. from The Ohio State University’s Department of Arts Administration, Education and Cultural Policy, with a concentration in Art Education. Her dissertation, Haptic Memory: Resituating Black Women’s Lived Experiences in Fiber Art Narratives, was awarded the 2020 Manuel Barkan Fellowship award.
About John Alleyne
John Alleyne (b. 1990) is an artist, educator, and independent curator from St. John, Barbados living and working in New Orleans, LA. His practice is rooted in explorations of memory, freedom and sanctum, connecting his lived experience with an intuitive, experimental process of silkscreen mark making and silkscreen-collage. Through this process, Alleyne challenges notions of colonialism, social injustice, stereotypes, reclaims narratives, and celebrates the beauty of going against mainstream societal norms.
He received his MFA from Louisiana State University, with a concentration in painting and drawing. Alleyne has been a fellow of Oxbow, ACRE, and Anderson Ranch Arts Center. He has exhibited work throughout various galleries and museums in the American South, the Caribbean, and Ireland.
His work is featured in New American Paintings (South Issue 142), Southern Cultures, Country Roads Magazine, The Chicago Reader, The Shepherd Express, Studio Visit Magazine, 225 Magazine, Savannah Now, and Issue #23 of The Hand Magazine.
Alleyne is an Assistant Professor of Art at Southern University and A&M College. He is an artist member of Baton Rouge Gallery and a collective member at Antenna in New Orleans. Alleyne is also the recipient of a 2023 Take Notice Fund Award and a 2025 Platforms Research Development Grant.
Learn more about Alleyne and see additional works by the artist
