Joyce J. Scott’s New traveling Exhibition

Jul 25

Mobilia Gallery has curated a new exhibition of the work of Joyce J. Scott, a gifted beadwork and performance artist and 2016 recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Award and numerous honorary doctorates, including her most recent Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Johns Hopkins University.

Entitled Messages, the exhibition will travel in 2023-2024 with stops in Ames, IA, Brockton, MA and Sacramenta, CA.

Here is the schedule:

University Museums, Iowa State University, Ames, IA
January 9 – April 2023
Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA
June 24 – November 5, 2023
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA
January 28 – June 2024

A full-color catalog will accompany the exhibition, to be published by Arnoldsche. Also entitled Messages, the catalog features beautiful images of Scott’s work plus several essays, including one I was asked to contribute, which I titled “Paradigm Shifts in Peyote Stitch.” The catalog will be published in late 2022 or early 2023.

When I encounter beadworkers who haven’t heard of Joyce yet, I try to explain. More than anyone else, starting in the 1970s and 80s, Joyce gave rise to what would become the contemporary beadwork field. She taught us what beadwork could do, who a beadwork artist could be. How beadwork could traffic in social critique, get viewers to question themselves. How to push one beadwork technique beyond its known limits to express a personal vision, triggering paradigm shifts that reverberate through the field. How a gifted, caring artist behaves, with honor, compassion and grace. How the horrors of slavery and racial abuse can be turned to some good - while not forgetting the bad.

Far beyond MacArthur genius, Scott’s more of a living immortal, mixing wisdom and compassion with savvy street smarts. ”Affordable earrings are a social good!” she said to me once. And it’s not just talk. Scott routinely makes earrings that regular women can afford, not only gallery-goers. “Beautify is a political act!” she said in another conversation. Meaning, making or contemplating a beautiful thing - be it visual, verbal, or auditory - is a way of countering the negative forces that dismiss beauty as self-indulgence or shameful waste of time. Wrong, Scott says. Beauty uplifts. It edifies, showing us who we can be at our best. The listening we can share. That violance, cruelty, drama and despair are not our only options. That we have choices, however small, to stand and assert.

You can watch videos of Joyce speaking and performing on Youtube. You’ll be amazed, as I always am, at the power of her self-presentation. Her humanitarian mind. Her abiding faith in the human race. Her commitment to keep pushing herself to grow beyond who she’s already been and what she’s already accomplished. Long may she light our way.

For more information, visit Mobilia’s website.

War, What is it Good For, Absolutely Nothing, Say it Again, by Joyce J. Scott, 2022. Glass beads in peyote stitch and other techniques. Courtesy, Mobilia Gallery. Photo: Michael Koryta.

Story Stole by Joyce J. Scott, 2021. Glass beads in peyote stitch and other techniques, found objects. Courtesy, Mobilia Gallery. Photo: Jeff Butler.