![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/c05985233a84ba6c5032dd1d134883fa16-bronxmuseum-reverend-joyce.rvertical.w600.jpg\")
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\n Art: Collection of Michael Sherman and Carrie Tivador\n <\/p>\n
The Reverend Joyce McDonald says a pastor once told her to \u201cask God what type of artist you are.\u201d She says God responded, \u201cYou\u2019re a testimonial artist.\u201d McDonald\u2019s testimonies come in the form of mostly unfired clay sculptures, sometimes embellished with glitter, nail polish, fabric, or paper towels. These figures are very small and simple (a mother and child, a woman praying) and almost na\u00efve in affect (they carry titles like Sweet Peace and Covered With Love), but don\u2019t let their modest appearance or diminutive stature fool you. The first major exhibition of her work, \u201cMinistry: Reverend Joyce McDonald,\u201d at the Bronx Museum, glows powerfully with spiritual feeling and is one of the best shows of the year. McDonald\u2019s great theme is one common to both Christianity and art: that out of great suffering comes rebirth and redemption.<\/p>\n
She speaks from harrowing experience. McDonald\u2019s life was beset by addiction and abuse until she found religion in the 1990s and got clean. In 1995, she was diagnosed with HIV. In 1997, she entered an art-therapy program funded by the Elton John AIDS Foundation. While she had dabbled in art since she was a girl, it was this program that introduced her to clay. \u201cI could see that spark in my artist\u2019s mind. And I could not stop,\u201d she has said. \u201cThe deepest, darkest secrets of my life all came out in clay.\u201d Now 74, she was ordained as a minister in 2009.<\/p>\n
There is an intimate intensity to her work. Family Grief depicts McDonald\u2019s father, who died in 1977, in his coffin, surrounded by family. \u201cThat same day I started using drugs,\u201d she has said. Her father appears again in My Dad, My Hero (Will McDonald), a bust painted gold. He wears a camera around his neck \u2014 a tribute to his profession and calling \u2014 like a cross. Her father is both a source of anguish and a beaming emblem of pride.<\/p>\n
So many of McDonald\u2019s sculptures manage to convey the joy of inner transformation. The faces smile softly with their eyes closed, beatific in their bliss without falling into bathos. Glory (A Taste of Sweetness After Near Death) features McDonald in a luminous purple shawl, gazing heavenward. Beauty and the Peace shows a woman with a COVID mask falling from her face. Beauty in the Midst (Strength) is a three-faced being bedecked in pearls, radiating like a talisman. Mother\u2019s Prayers echoes ancient votive statues in its compact elegance, while Covered With Love could be a folk version of a Renaissance-era Madonna and child.<\/p>\n
Several pieces delve into \u201cidentity politics\u201d \u2014 a term that she infuses with new life. The series Our Lives Mattered \u2014 the slogan heartbreakingly rendered in the past tense \u2014 memorializes George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, and Trayvon Martin. These figures are tender reliquaries, a reminder that the \u201cidentity\u201d in \u201cidentity politics\u201d doesn\u2019t necessarily come from race or gender but devastating experiences that McDonald herself is not foreign to.<\/p>\n
What astonishes is not only the life but the way she makes its toll visible. Clay, humble and unglamorous, becomes the vessel of grace. McDonald\u2019s sculptures recall Sister Corita Kent, who turned slogans into gospel. We think of Ana Mendieta, who merged ritual and wound. Gauguin\u2019s mottled ceramic heads and Rodin\u2019s figures pitched between ruin and divinity both come to mind. Tracey Emin\u2019s monumental sculpture Mother is also an important touchstone. \u201cI am so blessed,\u201d McDonald has said. \u201cGod gave me this gift so I could show the world that even in pain, there is joy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Art: Collection of Michael Sherman and Carrie Tivador The Reverend Joyce McDonald says a pastor once told her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[1149,25728,128,9,24,63,129,131,130,20492],"class_list":["post-44789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-art","tag-art-review","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news","tag-vulture-homepage-lede"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}