Grant Wood Fellow Lyndsey Scott helps individuals find themselves again through SONG*LINES, which are singing circles held in different locations around Iowa City

Isabelle Lubguban, Arts Reporter

May 6, 2025

The first thing depicted on artist Lyndsey Scott’s website is her, surrounded by a vibrant bed of grass. Scott’s face is calm, a serene smile on her lips.

“Our world is on fire. We have to find our ways back to healing and transformation together,” she said.

Those themes echo throughout her many years of creating and teaching with a love for taking inspiration as she found it everywhere. When she was a young artist, she moved from a rural town to St. Louis, Missouri, where she treated it as a teacher of structural racism and decay.

“The life of the city itself was speaking to me,” she said.

In St. Louis, Scott connected with young artists who were similarly inspired and began collaborating with them. She considered them her teachers and experimented with varied artistic outlets like parades and basement shows.

“Just creating whatever we can think of with no budget, so much time and so much passion, and it was almost like I stumbled from a mundane reality to a mythical world. All of our creative energy was multiplying each other,” she said.

When it comes to song, Scott said she was deeply moved by the Civil Rights Freedom singers and the role that collective singing played in that movement, which was to quell fear in the face of oppression.

She was also inspired by Meredith Monk, a composer, performer, and vocalist who thrives in “extended vocal technique.” This is a process to explore the voice as a language and instrument by making unique sounds.

Scott described her childhood as an “amuse yourself” period, as her mom wanted her to spend summers outside in the sunshine instead of watching television. She made up dances, created parades, and wrote songs, which is not very different from what she does now.

“You had to be creative to do that,” Scott said. “We were a big posse of neighborhood kids that lived in our imaginations, and we could have fun no matter what. I think just playing make-believe was so instrumental to my childhood.”

Ritual is also important to Scott, she believes it is the original multimedia and multi-dimensional art form.

“I’m interested in why we are creating and what our creations affect. Whatever media is required to play into that is ritual. It gathers and gleans from all of these practices,” Scott said.

Scott is in Iowa City for a year on the Grant Wood Art Colony Fellowship. She is the Interdisciplinary Performance Fellow and has a course called “Community Singing as Collective Power.”

“My students are rad, we’re just learning so much together. They’re writing songs and experimenting a lot,” Scott said.

Scott also wants to uplift the power of song away from the classroom, in the form of her new project, SONG*LINES. Inspired by the aboriginal tradition of song spirals or “dreaming tracks,” she holds song circles across Iowa City to map pathways of intimacy between land and people.

“I have seen how it facilitates collaboration and village,” Scott said. “My mentor shared a book with me called ‘Song Spirals,’ written by a group of Aboriginal women in Australia who talk about how singing brings the world into existence. It’s like this map of consciousness.”

“It’s a great experience of being together and creating positive vibrations,” participant Jeff Hall said. “I think both songs my partner and I were here for were tied in well with the location.”

Kate Wiley, the fundraising coordinator for the Bike Library, said she had worked with Scott before. For the first two songs, Scott started with a song about the revolution and then transitioned to another one about biking.

“It’s a much more soul-bearing experience than just chatting about the weather,” Wiley said. “I think, for the Bike Library, revolution and biking are intertwined, and that was a great segue.”

Scott’s mission of connecting people and creating positivity through communal artistic experience was a success at the Bike Library. On a humid Sunday, the crowd of singers all shared a deep appreciation for song.

“Every song resonated with me, but the idea of empowerment and freedom in each one struck a deep chord,” participant Mike Haverkamp said. “I think music and song can touch every individual’s true humanity.”