Transcript:

[Joyce J. Scott] Hey, Oletha. How you doing?

[Oletha DeVane] Hey, babe. I’m okay. I’ve been really thinking about you for the last, what? Week or so. To me, when I look at your work and I remember very early on, I always felt that your work moved us forward, moved me forward, in a way that, not only questioned why you do it, but the fact that it has this power.

[Scott] You know, Oletha, I want to say something about friendship in regard to the work, too.

[DeVane] Well, you know, I would not have been your friend [both laugh].

[Scott] If I hadn’t paid you! Tell me truth—I gave you money!

[DeVane] No. This whole concept of “Bearing Witness.”

[Scott] I think it is a connection with artists, and I think that’s really important about being artists in Baltimore and how we bear witness through friendship and through a kind of mutual creativity. You know we belong to a group called Gurlz of Baltimore, but there are other people who consistently work together, because that’s what this section is about.

[DeVane] Um-hum.
[Scott] Thinking about the piece that you lent, it’s in this section; “Catch a Nigger By His Toe.” It’s got that, like, really spicy title that now would get us in a lot of trouble. But it is succinct and exactly what the piece is about.
[DeVane] This is an early piece. Every time it goes out of my house to a museum, I’m like…I feel a little lost.

[Scott] And part of the strength of these earlier pieces is how they are bare, how they are straight to the point and possibly simplistic in their bearing. You know, I love the idea that some of my early works can be held in your hand. And that you have a real first-person conversation to it, which is different than doing really large pieces because you are sometimes consumed in them. But this one, you consume it almost.

[DeVane] This piece continues to hold power. My father was one of those people who had come from the South. He left North Carolina when he was 16 years old. His mother sent him away because she knew he would be lynched. He really had no filter, because he had a big mouth. I mean, you know, our mothers and fathers, having come from that place, they knew what the deal was. So I look at that piece and, you know, it came from a counting game.
[Scott] And that is the power of handwork. It sounds hokey and hippie; about the therapeutic impulse of this kind of work.

[DeVane] You talk about this concept of healing, and enveloping, and seducing and all those things. And that’s what I also love about not only working with you, but also seeing the work that you’re doing now that it carries this incredible trajectory to change the way we see art, the way we see conceptually how beads have become this method of conveying light. And I really, absolutely believe that for every bit of light that we can get in our lives, the better.

[Scott] I love you Oletha, thanks for talking to me.

[DeVane] Oh, honey, I love you too. You take care and be safe, okay?

[Scott] Okay, Yes, ma’am.

[DeVane] All right. Love you.

[Scott] Love you too.