Joyce J. Scott - Walk a Mile in My Dreams

Edited by Catharina Manchanda and Cecilia Wichmann 

The most comprehensive career retrospective to date, developed in close collaboration with the artist, this exhibition catalog reveals the full breadth of Scott’s utterly unique vision, from her woven tapestries and soft sculpture of the 1970s to her audacious genre-defying performances of the 1980s, and her ascendancy as a sculptor of astonishing social force and formal ingenuity.

Scott draws inspiration from generations of makers in her family and traditions that integrate art into everyday use across many cultures around the world. Best known for her virtuosic use of beads and glass, Scott coaxes viewers in with beauty and humor to confront racism, sexism, inequality, and complex family dynamics. Her imperatives to social justice—inextricable from her roving creative curiosity—reverberate a call to challenge unequal social roles, to agitate for freedom, to construct a life of art and persist in it.

Interviews with the artist by Leslie King Hammond and Valerie Cassel Oliver focus on Scott’s matrilineage and womanist ethos and on the genre-defying choreography of her career across disciplines. Six thematic essays by established and emerging scholars discuss the ancient and global reach of beads, including Yorùbá traditions; consider the utility of satire and performance in connection with the work of emerging Black artists; and explore the significance of geography, history, and place. Excerpts from foundational out-of-print texts and an illustrated chronology annotated by Scott appear alongside contributions by artists Sonya Clark, Oletha DeVane, Jeffrey Gibson, Kay Lawal-Muhammad, Malcolm Peacock, and William C. Rhodes III.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1948, Scott grapples with profound social, historical, racial, economic, and personal challenges that concern society at large in dazzling beadwork, sculpture, textiles, jewelry, printmaking, and performance. For fifty years, she has upended hierarchies of art and craft, insisting that artistic expression is that “extra inch of life” that nourishes the soul even in the most challenging circumstances.

Seattle Art Museum, 2024, hardcover, 9.75 x 11 inches, 288 pages.