WASHINGTON -- From Jim Crow cotton fields to international art galleries, a world-renowned artist shared her family history to inspire Washington D.C. students to dream beyond their Southeast neighborhood.
Joyce Scott is a visual storyteller who helps you see beauty in the struggle; like her bead work sculpture of a women raped, a decapitation in Tanzania, the hardships of Africans around the world and here in the U.S.
Each glass bead brings life to the intricate work of her jewelry and sculptures.
Scott doesn't preach but silently tells the story of the black experience - her family's experience - through her art.
“Both my parents were sharecroppers my father in North Carolina picking tobacco and my mother in South Carolina picking cotton,” explained Scott. “Then they came up during the Great Migration to get better jobs and to get out from under the fist of racism.”
Scott still lives in Baltimore, but chose to speak to middle school students from Excel Academy, an all-girls school in Southeast Washington D.C.
They gathered at the Building Museum during the Smithsonian Craft show where she received the 2019 Smithsonian Visionary Award.
Scott used her time not to talk with the young women about the honor bestowed upon her, but rather the journey it took to get there.
“Did you doubt yourself?” one student asked Scott.
“Did I doubt myself?!,” Scott exclaimed. “Yes, and I still doubt myself because I'm human. Whenever you ever get weak about stuff remember somebody passed away for us to be where we are right now that would make me very strong.”
She told WUSA9 she wanted to offer some inspiration and perspectives to the young ladies.
“Those things that are negative I use them as fertilizer to get to the next place,” Scott said, “I want them to know they can evolve and become more of who they want to be it's open for them you have to go beyond the people who are naysayers, you have to go beyond your own doubt, you have to go beyond thinking TV is the only thing that tells the truth…because you can have the world.”