CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/20/2025

The testimonial art of Reverend Joyce McDonald

“When I first handled clay … I can’t explain it. It might have felt like someone who was holding their baby for the first time. Immediately, something happened to me. I don’t know why I’m making what I’m making … I have no clue. I don’t know what it’s going to be.” So said the sculptor, activist and Church of the Open Door minister Reverend Joyce McDonald in 2024. A former performer and addict who tested positive for H.I.V. in 1995, the Reverend Joyce McDonald now counsels women in prison and shelters, while exposing and unearthing her own traumas and triumphs in clay. Her work is the subject of a major exhibition at the Bronx Museum, on view through January 11, 2026. Pictured here, one of several figures titled Halleluya Ladies (1998).