Distinguished Craft Artists:
Joyce Scott
The remarkable work of Joyce Scott is a protean combination of historian, narrator and maker. Nothing is off limits. Everything must be explored. To borrow a phrase from the architect Robert Venturi, her work is about “messy vitality”.
Mixed media, a facile and polite catch-all phrase overused to the point of cliché in the Art World today, is inadequate to describe the daily experiences of life that vibrate and pulse through Scott’s work. It is her brassy triumph over cultural adversity and her ability to powerfully communicate this sense of history through her work that shines through, separating it from the large piles of kitschy junk being extolled so lavishly in the contemporary art scene.
Elizabeth Scott, Joyce Scott’s 92-year-old mother, was among a small group of artists such as Faith Ringgold who were early innovators in using the language of traditional African-American quilt making as a contemporary art form. That window opened by her mother and others of her generation has allowed Joyce to leap full-blown into this arena, re-interpreting these ideas in combinations of fiber, beadwork, glass, ceramics and found objects, as well as a recent series of monoprints, which are having their first formal exhibition here. Together, they form a poetic and vibrant snapshot of this moment as a part of that longer history.
Joyce Scott is a 2007 winner of the Master of the Medium Award.
Her work is available through Snyderman Gallery, a JRA gallery caucus member.