A descendant of African-Americans, Native Americans, and Scots, the Baltimore born and raised Joyce channels the inspiration of three generations of storytellers, quilters, basket makers, and wood, metal, and clay workers into her work.
While her beaded sculptural forms and necklaces are colorful and exuberant, their subtext is bold and provocative, addressing loaded political and social issues including gender, race, and class struggle. "In Scott’s hands, human adornment becomes a vehicle for social commentary and a means for confronting contentious issues affecting contemporary society," says the Museum of Art and Design's Chief Curator, Lowery Stokes Sims, who organized the upcoming MAD exhibition Maryland to Murano: Neckpieces and Sculptures by Joyce J. Scott. "Navigating controversial themes including hunger, rape, and racial stereotypes," she continues. "Scott’s jewelry transcends the typical function of adornment and embellishment."
Bringing together Scott’s neckpieces and blown glass sculptures for the first time, the exhibition will examine the interplay between these two bodies of work and reveal the range of Scott’s technique and skill, as well as the complex relationship she has shaped among adornment, content and methodology. “It’s important to me," adds the artist, "to use art in a manner that incites people to look and then carry something home – even it it’s subliminal – that might make a change in them.”
Maryland to Murano: Neckpieces and Sculptures by Joyce J. Scott will be on view at MAD from September 30, 2014 to March 15, 2015.
- Lesley Scott
NOTE: Honoring the craty past to help us pave the way forward fashionwise is a signature of the Folkspun fashion tribe. For more of my posts & podcasts about this tribe, CLICK HERE. To learn more about each of fashion's four mega-tribes that I track, START HERE.
