Kudzu

There's just a lot to do with it.

As we wrap up our conversation with Joyce, we talk about her Kudzu series, which is a body of work still in progress, but was a part of her show Hypernatural in 2025 at R & Company in New York City.

Kudzu is a storied invasive vine native to East Asia that was introduced to the U.S. in the 1870s and is famously known as the vine that ate the South.

Joyce collected actual kudzu vines from her home near Houston, Texas, and combined it with hundreds of handmade faux kudzu leaves made from epoxy, cloth, wire, and paint for this work.

And what actual idea are you playing with in the kudzu series? What's the operative conceptual basis?

At the same time that I, you know, had like a conversation with my, the curator, James Semaitis, who was the museum relations director with Arn Company, the gallery that I work with.

And he was, you know, he, he was like visiting a lot of museums in the South and he just asked if I would ever like consider making work about, you know, where I grew up and, something a little bit more, you know, personal because, you know, up until then, I didn't really think about making work about identity or like personal background or narrative.

And in a lot of ways, the Kudzu series, it's not really about me either, but it is about a specific time and place.

There's people out here all across.

Kudzu is a plague, and he's basically saying Tennessee orange is the same as Kudzu.

Is it

orange? Is Kudzu orange? No, he's just saying, you know how Tennessee orange, it's not a color that you can sit with.

It's ugly.

That's kind of what he's saying Kudzu is.

Yeah, sometimes y'all speak in Andy Griffith.

That's like, that's like, God is one of those.

Yeah.

And basically Kudzu is growing everywhere in L.A.,

It is, yeah.

It's giant.

So he was making a lot of rounds in this point in the eighties.

Anyways.

I remember the first big reports they had like on 2020 and Nightline stuff, all that about Kudzu.

They act like it was going to be the end of the world.

The Cryptolepis definitely does.

And the Kudzu is for neurological health, which I definitely need.

So that's what's going on there.

I'm having a flare of femoral neuralgia right now.

Four, four, I'm dropping muddy.

Outer space, kid Kudzu.

Introduce me to your bitch ass wifey.

And we know she sloppy.