Anne Percoco

Seeds: Containers of a World to Come at the Mildred Lane Kemper Museum at Washington University in St. Louis, open through July 28, 2025.

https://www.kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu/on-view/on-view/seeds-containers-of-a-world-to-come-2025

At a moment when ecological concerns are becoming increasingly urgent, Seeds: Containers of a World to Come brings into dialogue work by ten contemporary artists whose research-based practices are defined by sustained inquiry into plant–human–land relations. For the artists Shiraz Bayjoo, Carolina Caycedo, Juan William Chávez, Beatriz Cortez, Ellie Irons, Kapwani Kiwanga, Jumana Manna, Anne Percoco, Cecilia Vicuña, and Emmi Whitehorse, the seed is the kernel, literally and metaphorically, of their investigations into issues of fragility, preservation, and possibility in the face of the global climate crisis.

More info about our installation:
https://nextepochseedlibrary.com/kemper/

Date and time
Sunday, September 29 · 3 - 5pm EDT

Location
The Climate Imaginarium
406A Comfort Road New York, NY 11231

Part of Imagined Futures: This is Your City Climate Week Program and City-Wide Scavenger Hunt

Join us to close out Climate Week with intention as we gather to honor place and possibility. on Governors `Island. With an optional ferry talk to get us there with elder and longtime activist Jk Canepa and youth organizer Anna Tsomo with youth from 6th St Community Climate Action group.

Governors island is full of complicated history. Once stewarded by the Lenape peoples, it was sold to the Dutch in the context of a violent colonial take-over, and housed the military for years as a place of strategic defense. For years it was a fallow as anywhere in NY until the slow artistic and cultural residencies made inroads to a future of massive development. In the layer cake of complication, there is much to honor, grieve and hold for the whole future of our city and world.

In collaboration with the American Indian Community House and Climate Imaginarium, we'll be joined by Ellie Irons and Anne Percoco of Next Epoch Seed Library and held by Noelle Ghoussaini of SacredSpace to lead us in the closing ritual.

All are welcome!

Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/grief-seeds-a-closing-gathering-for-climate-week-2024-tickets-1005397560167

I recently finished a family residency at beautiful Stoneleaf Retreat, along with Ellie Irons as Next Epoch Seed Library. Photos are from studio visit with Helen Toomer, the director. Ellie and I each brought our toddlers, spouses, and parents/in-laws. What a great way to support female artists and mothers.

https://fluxhawaii.com/the-virtue-of-weeds/

by Timothy A. Schuler

"The pandemic has forced many of us to reevaluate our relationships to productivity. I’ve come to see that our cultural and aesthetic preference for landscapes that are neat and tidy is part of a larger cult of order and optimization. Weeds intrude on the narrative that we have it all together. We may not always recognize what a particular fallow period—whether an afternoon, or the interminable pause in which we currently find ourselves—is providing. But claiming time for ourselves is, itself, an act of liberation. As the artist Anne Percoco put it, 'Weeds serve their own purposes.'"

Our Green New Deal: A Community-University Working Session for Environmental Justice In the Passaic River Watershed, Rutgers Newark School of Arts & Sciences, Newark, NJ

https://sasn.rutgers.edu/our-green-new-deal-community-university-working-session-environmental-justice-passaic-river-watershed

https://sasn.rutgers.edu/our-green-new-deal-community-university-working-session-environmental-justice-passaic-river-watershed-session-1

For the Next Epoch Seed Library, I’ve installed Lawn (Re)Disturbance Laboratory at two sites at Seton Hall University, in concert with the exhibition, New World Water, opening in November, and curated by Samantha Becker and Jeanne Brasile. I’ll be monitoring these sites through the fall and documenting what species grow.

The Next Epoch Seed Library is grateful to receive a grant from the Puffin Foundation to fund our 2019 activities.

For the past two weeks I’ve been in residence at Mass MoCA’s Studios. I’m revisiting my Parallel Botany project, extrapolating the leaves into whole plants, via collage. Photos by Dylan McLaughlin.

http://massmoca.org/event/studios/

“A library of invasive weeds and survivors” by Enrique Gili, for Deutsche Welle

http://www.dw.com/en/a-library-of-invasive-weeds-and-survivors/a-37842715

https://www.fastcoexist.com/3066328/inside-the-hard-life-of-the-modern-bee

Ellie Irons and Anne Percoco want you to rethink weeds. The artists run the Next Epoch Seed Library, a seed bank stocked with specimens from vacant lots, sidewalks, and superfund sites in the New York City area. The plants tend to get torn out or doused with herbicides—but they also help stabilize soil, suck up carbon, and keep cities cooler as the climate changes.

Wild city plants also help support pollinators like bees in urban areas—which is why the seed library is part of a new exhibit called Nectar: War upon the Bees at Pratt Manhattan Gallery.

“We’re trying to help validate and help people engage with these wild plants that are often called weeds," says Irons. "And to think about them as habitat, think about them as these really valuable parts of green infrastructure . . . that would also be beneficial for a whole suite of nonhumans, including bees.”

I met students at Jersey City MS #7 to talk about #TreeSpeech. They’ll soon be creating their own twitter accounts for nearby trees!

Day of Action: Brooklyn Seed Freedom

Join us to align with the Global Movement for Seed Freedom on Swale, a first year floating food forest docked at Pier 6 in Brooklyn Bridge Park. We will gather in a day of action to share seeds, resources and practice seed saving methods to strengthen the seed network in the New York City bioregion. Featuring seeds saved from Swale, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Next Epoch Seed Library, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, The Old Stone House, Pioneer Works and YOU!

Bring seeds to share, and a few envelopes to harvest seeds into!

This event will launch an open-source seed library that will be based at Pioneer Works art center in Red Hook.

Swale is a collaborative floating food project built on a 130-foot by 40-foot floating platform that contains an edible forest garden. Functioning as both a sculpture and a tool, the Swale project provides free healthy food at the intersection of public art and service, reinforcing water as a commons and working towards a regenerative public food system.

Pioneer Works is a non-profit foundation in Red Hook, New York City that fosters multidisciplinary creativity in the arts and sciences.

Webpage with more details:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/brooklyn-seed-freedom-tickets-28299989029
More info:
http://swaleny.org

Chance Ecologies: Queens
A Community Partnership Exhibition Program at the Queens Museum
Curated by Catherine Grau and Nathan Kensinger
Flushing Meadows Corona Park, New York City Building
Opening reception: October 8, 2pm-4pm
Participatory workshops and public performances: October 16
Chance Ecologies Symposium: October 23
Closing Date: October 30

http://www.queensmuseum.org/events/opening-reception-for-chance-ecologies-queens

Image: Suzanne Anker, Twilight, 2016, courtesy of the artist. Photography: Raul Valverde

NECTAR
9 December 2016 – 11 February 2017
Pratt Manhattan Gallery
144 West 14th Street, 2nd floor
New York, NY 10011 USA

The faster, bigger, cheaper approach to food that is slowly draining our planet’s resources and compromising our health has also attracted the attention of a large number of artists internationally. Merging their aesthetic and social practice, these artists could fit in the expanded field of the “aesthetic of engagement”.

Curated by:
Berta Sichel and Barbara Krulik (Bureau Phi Art Projects)

Artists:
Suzanne Anker (USA)
Kelly Heaton (USA)
Marine Hugonnier (France)
Ellie Irons (USA)
Juan de Junco (Spain)
Lucia Madriz (Costa Rica/Germany)
Beth Moyses (Brazil)
Anne Percoco (USA)
Luis Fernando Ramirez Celis (Colombia)
Carlos Schwartz (Spain)

I’m working on a new project with Sustainable Jersey City. I am assigning twitter accounts to Jersey City trees, and inviting residents to tweet, in the first person, from the trees' perspectives. More info here:
http://treespeech.net

Milcah Bassel interviewed Ellie Irons and I for Dime and Honey, a wonderful blog about studio practice, livelihood, relationships and making meaningful contributions to culture today.

http://www.dimeandhoney.com/art/next_epoch_seed_library/

Ellie was interviewed by Ben Valentine of Hyperallergic and talked extensively about our Next Epoch Seed Library installation at William Paterson. Learn about Ellie’s work & read the whole thing here -
http://hyperallergic.com/292327/an-ecologically-minded-artist-navigating-the-nature-culture-continuum/

“Living Together” writeup on notwhatitis.com by Tracy DiTolla.

NESL “looks into preserving invasive plants, and weeds, which are most likely to continue to thrive in an environment made up of predominantly GMO plants. Viewers can take and leave seeds that are stored in a house-shaped cabinet. There is also a couch, a coffee table made of repurposed cinder blocks, various reading materials…plant specimens…and a live butterfly flying around.”

https://notwhatitis.com/2016/04/18/living-together/

Will have some work at Martha Clippenger’s table at Zine Machine / Durham Printed Matter Festival

Durham Armory
220 Foster Street
Durham, NC 27701
Saturday, April 16, 2016
11AM – 7PM

Living Together: Nurturing Nature in the Built Environment
Dana Fritz, Ellie Irons, Anne Percoco, and Tattfoo Tan
March 21 – May 13, 2016

Curated by Gallery Director Kristen Evangelista, this exhibition addresses our complex, mediated, and often fraught relationship with nature, and features plants as well as photography, drawing, and collage by Dana Fritz, Ellie Irons, Anne Percoco and Tattfoo Tan.

Opening tomorrow, 4/10, and artist talk Monday, 4/18.
http://www.wpunj.edu/coac/gallery/Exhibitions/

Carol Devine participated in this Svalbard cleanup and organized an on-ship art exhibition for participants. I was honored to have Indra’s Cloud included and to be part of this important conversation. She wrote about her experience as well as the show.

https://maptia.com/caroldevine/stories/discard-art-svalbard-floating-exhibition

Article in Untapped Cities by Jeff Reuben, featuring the Next Epoch Seed Library in Chance Ecologies.

View the full article here:
http://untappedcities.com/2015/12/23/chance-ecologies-art-exhibition-explores-the-soon-to-be-lost-wild-landscapes-of-hunters-point-south/