Baltimore-based MacArthur Fellow will be on site Nov. 9-18
TOLEDO, Ohio – The Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) named Joyce J. Scott as the 52nd Guest Artist Pavilion Project (GAPP) Artist in Residence. The Baltimore-based artist will be at TMA Nov. 9-18 creating new work in glass and sharing her processes with the public. At the conclusion of the residency on Nov. 18 at 7 p.m., Scott will give a talk on her work at the TMA Glass Pavilion. The talk is free and open to the public.
Since its opening in 2006, TMA’s Glass Pavilion has uniquely combined its role as the home of one of the world’s great glass collections with its place as a working glass studio. GAPP brings the most influential and up-and-coming glass artists in the world to Toledo.
Scott is an innovative fiber artist, sculptor, jeweler, printmaker, performer and installation artist whose work creates powerful opportunities for much-needed dialogue on racial, gender and economic issues. She weaves together humor and horror to address both the beauty and brutality of human nature, and in doing so, reveals a complex, yet collective shared history.
Scott is best known for using the peyote stitch, an off-loom, free-form, glass bead weaving technique. She merges beads, blown glass and found objects with autobiographical, sociological and political content to unapologetically confront themes of racism, sexism, violence, inequality, history and oppression while simultaneously embracing splendor, spirituality, nature and healing.
“I’m not a politician, I’m not a preacher—my belief pulpit is the arts,” said Scott. “It is my way to reveal, understand and make real the issues of today’s world and how they affect me. It’s through beadwork and the ways in which the medium mirrors translucency of mind and being that I can share my resolutions to these issues.”
Scott received prestigious honors from the Tiffany Foundation, the National Endowment of the Arts and the American Craft Council. In 2016, she was named a MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Her work is held in more than 40 public collections, including the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C.), Brooklyn Museum of Art (New York) and Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York).
In 2018 TMA acquired Scott’s Nuanced Veil (2008-2018), the artist’s largest beaded wall piece at the time of acquisition. Scott found inspiration for the work in the Pharaohs in Egypt and the cycles of life and death that appear on the walls of the royal tombs. The flatness of Nuanced Veil harkens back to Scott’s earlier necklace forms. It also references the quilting tradition in her family and the notion of stitching together parts of a life that might need reconnecting.
“Joyce is an artist who gives voice to hard truths,” said Diane Wright, TMA’s senior curator of glass and contemporary craft. “Through a dedicated loyalty to handicraft, her work challenges our perceptions, invites difficult conversations and subsequently sparks a desire to change this world for the better. We look forward to furthering our connection with her through this residency.”