MacArthur Fellow Joyce J. Scott at the 2015 March On

Baltimore artist Joyce J. Scott has been selected as a Class of 2016 MacArthur Fellow. Joyce was a co-presenter with Isabel Wilkerson at the 2015 festival event at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Here’s part of the MacArthur announcement:

“Scott is a jewelry maker and sculptor repositioning craft, and in particular beadwork, as a potent platform for commentary on social and political injustices. In handmade works ranging from elaborate, over-sized neckpieces, to two- and three-dimensional figurative sculptures, to installations, Scott upends conceptions of beadwork and jewelry as domestic or merely for adornment by creating exquisitely crafted objects that reveal, upon closer examination, stark representations of racism and sexism and the violence they engender.

Scott continues to push the expressive potential of beading in her recent work. She integrates her trademark beadwork with blown glass sculptures in pieces created in collaboration with artisans in Murano, Italy, and she is currently at work on an outdoor installation in homage to Harriet Tubman that will be of unprecedented scale.

Scott’s diverse and adventurous body of work blurs the boundaries between fine art and craft and challenges viewers to confront the darker aspects of human nature in scenes both contemporary and historical.”

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