5/24/11

Twenty-five Baltimore County Public Schools visual arts teachers participated in a professional development workshop with internationally recognized local artist Joyce Scott. During the evening workshop on Thursday, May 19, at Pine Grove Middle School, the teachers created “memory vessels” as personal narratives that can then be used as exemplars for forms of expressive story-telling with their students. 

Memory vessels, believed to have originated in southern African American communities, are jars to which various objects – such as buttons, beads, keys, and jewelry – are added. Historians believe that memory jars were originally created to serve as grave markers or as a kind of scrapbook honoring someone’s life.

Joyce Scott is recognized worldwide as a printmaker, weaver, sculptor,
performance artist, quilter, jeweler, and bead artist. Her work is in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Mint Museum, Charlotte, N.C.; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; The Studio Museum, Harlem, N.Y.; and the Taft Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio.  It has been exhibited around the world. In 2000, the Baltimore Museum of Art honored her with a 30-year career retrospective.