Judith and Joyce Scott were twins, born into a middle class family in
Cincinnati, Ohio. As small children, the
two girls were dressed alike, played together, and were encouraged to
participate equally. Joyce later wrote:
"At first we lived unaware and unafraid. In the
sandbox where we played, pouring sand in each other's hair, wiggling toes in
wetness, making our leaf and stick dishes and dinners, we still felt only the
innocence of our soft skin and earthy explorations. But the forces pulling at
us and threatening us grew as we grew. No longer wrapped in the protective web
of our family's ties alone, we soon joined the neighborhood. There Judy was
seen as different - and to a few ignorant and fearful souls, different meant
dangerous. Our next-door neighbors refused to let her in their yard. Currents
growing, doors slamming shut."
But Judith was born with Down syndrome, and after an attack of Scarlet
Fever, she also lost her hearing. When
she was tested for entry to special school, her deafness meant that she did not
respond to verbal questions, and so she was thought uneducable. At age 7, her parents, acting on the medical
advice of the time, sent her away to a residential institution for people with
profound intellectual disability, where she would stay for the next 35 years. Very distressed at being parted from her
sister, Judith was seen as a disruptive presence on the wards. Joyce wrote:
"The State Institution was a terrible place - worse than terrible -
full of the awful sounds and smells of human suffering and abandonment. It
still lives in my nightmares. That Judy is not haunted, that she has not been
destroyed is a testament to the human spirit and most especially to hers. There
is no doubt that institutional life has left its mark. Her habit of stealing
small bits and pieces, of hoarding things, of being initially suspicious of
strangers and of tending to isolate herself, these all reflect those terrible
times. Her incredible ability to persevere and to sustain her focus, to hear
her own inner voice, may also come from those years of crowded aloneness."
However, in 1986, her sister Joyce fought to get Judith out of the
institution, and Judith lived together with Joyce and her family in
California. Later she moved into a
community home, which meant that she enrolled at Creative Growth Arts Center,
in Oakland. She started in the painting
class, where she showed no particular talent.
Several years later, she saw
people working with textiles with a visiting fiber artist, Sylvia Seventy. Judith Scott immediately gravitated to that
medium, and created her own way of working.
Her pieces consist of found objects, which she carefully wrapped in coloured fibre. She would appropriate any object lying around the studios that she felt like, to act as the core of her sculptures, including once an electric fan, and at least one set of car keys. Each piece might take weeks of careful wrapping and weaving and knotting until she was satisfied. Sometimes reminiscent of the figures of Alberto Giacometti, the results might look like strange animals or totem poles, or cocoons. Often, they come in pairs. As soon as she had finished one artwork, she would begin on the next one.
Her pieces consist of found objects, which she carefully wrapped in coloured fibre. She would appropriate any object lying around the studios that she felt like, to act as the core of her sculptures, including once an electric fan, and at least one set of car keys. Each piece might take weeks of careful wrapping and weaving and knotting until she was satisfied. Sometimes reminiscent of the figures of Alberto Giacometti, the results might look like strange animals or totem poles, or cocoons. Often, they come in pairs. As soon as she had finished one artwork, she would begin on the next one.
Judith worked as an artist for five days a week for eighteen years, and
produced over 200 sculptures. Her work
is collected in public museums, such as
MOMA, New York or the American Museum of Folk Art, and private collections all
over the world: she has become one of the most famous of all Outsider Artists. As well as a critical study by John MacGregor, she was the subject of four different documentary
films, in which she appears as almost regal, wearing a large hat, and firmly
determined to make her work in the way she wanted, often carrying the large pile of
glossy magazines, which she liked to look at. Critic Eve Sedgewirk talks of her as "the holder of an obscure treasure". Rachel Adams writes: "Looking at a piece by Judith Scott, our
eyes are invited to function as organs of touch, sensing the texture and heft
of the artifact, becoming aware of the relationship between our own bodies and
the work of art."
Until the end, Judith remained very close to her sister and to her sister’s family, and it was in Joyce’s arms that she died of heart failure, aged 61.
Until the end, Judith remained very close to her sister and to her sister’s family, and it was in Joyce’s arms that she died of heart failure, aged 61.
Links
Judith Scott’s work can currently be seen in an exhibition called Bound and unbound at Brooklyn Museum until March 29 2015.
There’s also a review of the show in the New York Times
