Joyce J. Scott is not an easy woman to interview. It’s not that she is reticent. It’s just hard to get a word in edgewise because practically every person we passed during our day together in Baltimore stopped to talk to her, shouting out “The Queen!” or “Mama Joyce!” whenever we entered one of her local haunts. “It might not be an exaggeration to say she’s the defining artist of Baltimore,” said Lowery Stokes Sims, her longtime friend and curator of her work, in a recent phone call. “She was born here, raised here, went to school here, went out into the world but always had this place as a base — she never left.”

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Persons: Joyce J, Scott, It’s, “, Mama Joyce, ”, Lowery Stokes Sims Locations: Baltimore, “