Sheniqua Glover
October 27, 2014
Dr. A. Pierre ADW 111
The Story Behind “SHHHHH!” Joyce J. Scott was born in 1948 in Baltimore, Maryland. Scott has a mixed ethnicity of Scots, and African and Native American. As a young child, the young Scott watched her mother, a well-known fiber artist created majestic quilt. Her mother’s work along with her African American family’s heritage of storytellers, quilters, basket makers, and wood metal, and clay workers contributed to the ideas Scott uses for her artwork pieces. She is known as the “Queen of Beadwork”. Each of Joyce J. Scott’s beaded statues address the stories of current political and social issues, like race, gender, and class difficulties. In one of her interviews asking about how she thinks of her artwork, Scott responds, “It’s important to me to use art in a manner that incites people to look and then carry something home – even its subliminal – that might make a change in them.” Looking at her art pieces one can really take something from just viewing it. Out of the works she has in the “Brides of Anansi: Fiber Contemporary Art” on display at Spelman College, the “SHHHHH!” statue has a lot of information to pass off to those who stop to admire its craftsmanship. In this figurine, the tale of the life of an African woman is entailed as she take of the challenge of balancing the individuals around her. Joyce J. Scott’s “SHHHHH!” statue gives the perception that Scott wanted to deliver a message on gender, feminism, and slavery. The first ideal one would presume about the beaded statue is that the woman represents the gender stigma placed on all females. As a woman anywhere, females are directly given the duties to nurture, to clean, and to have children. From a historical perspective, most women from the past “are often invisible, devalued, or marginalized” because they are females (Guy-Sheftall, p.100).