Judith Scott - artist extraordinary  1943-2005

The Judith Scott Fan Club

The Judith Scott Fan Club provides a forum where people interested in Judith Scott and her art can post comments, exchange views and learn about related sites, books, films, recent articles and up-coming exhibitions.

To subscribe to the Judith Scott Fan Club
Email us at: judithscottart@aol.com 

Please keep us informed of any relevant news or Internet postings you come across.

Please note that subscription is free and that your information remains private and never shared

 
Nearing Completion:
EnTwined: 
Reflections from the Silent World of Judith Scott

by Joyce Wallace Scott

To learn more about this compelling book 
Click here to read what Dr. John Cooke says of EnTwined

If you might later be interested in subscribing to a pre-publication copy of EnTwined signed by the author, please email us at: judithscottart@aol.com

Excerpts from Recent (and not so recent) Internet Postings and emails:
please keep them coming

If you are in NewYork, make a special effort to visit the American Folk Art Museum.   Their new exhibition, drawn from material in their permanent collection, entitled "Approaching Abstraction" features work by Judy and has drawn enthusiastic reviews.

In  a recent email sam, aka sheila sabatino, wrote: 

 "Joyce, I am really looking forward to reading ENTWINED -- I can't even get the words and feelings out that I want to express to you -- reading only a part of your story, I feel something so special has been added to my life---- anybody that gets to know you through your writings will have some wonderful pieces added to their heart and soul as I have--with the utmost of respect and feelings"

Amber (http://chicken-n-waffles.blogspot.com) has written:

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

"Outsider: The Life and Art of Judith Scott [a film by Betsy Bayha] delves into the life of a compelling, creative and talented individual who has survived in the face of daunting odds to create rich and intriguing works of art."

"Judith Scott has Downs Syndrome, is deaf and does not speak. Yet after 35 years of institutionalization, with the help of a sister who never gave up on her, she emerged to create a series of sculptures that have fascinated and mystified art experts and collectors around the world."

Martha Miller (marthamillerart.blogspot.com) writes: 

Thursday, April 17, 2008

The Unstoppable Judith Scott 

I first read about Judith Scott in a Treasures of the Soul Visions magazine from the American Visionary Art Museum five years ago. This excerpt from the Visions magazine article describes Judith's creative process:

Judith works constantly, but there are moments when, unpredictably, she goes off on "shopping expeditions." She checks various nooks and crannies, even private offices, all over the studio, acquiring magazines, various objects, bits of rejected material, or more yarn. She is almost invisible on these hunting forays, very secretive as she conceals things in her purse or her bags. Her creative process involves theft. Things disappear. Spools of yarn, thread, string, disappear. Wood, cardboard, metal objects, disappear. The people around her have adapted. This is not easy when your purse or wallet, the magazine you were reading, or your car keys are involved. At Creative Growth Art Center theft as a creative principle has been accepted, with the disappearance of thousands of dollars worth of yarn, cord, and string, now budgeted for. Needless to say, Judith's work could never have unfolded in a huge custodial institution.

This process involving theft makes so much sense to me. With every sculpture Judith re-enacted how her life was stolen from her. This was her core issue, and it forms the core of each piece she created. This just kills me. 

Gloria Maria Cappelletti commented:.

"Judith Scott cocoons are the most incredible art works i have ever seen. so powerful and true. "

Bill Schubert of the Headfooters Gallery, Cleveland, OH (www.headfooters.com) wrote:

"Another thrill, though of a different kind, came when Tom [DiMaria] showed me the "Judith Room" where all of Judith Scott's work is stored. Judith had just passed away a few month's earlier, and her absence was a palpable presence everywhere in the building, but, especially in this dim, crowded room. Her life's work -- all that is not in some fabulous museum or private collection -- was in this space. Mysterious cocoons, shrouded in plastic, each of these objects seem to hold a piece of the secret that was Judith. Thank you to Tom and Jennifer for choosing to let Headfooters be the first gallery to exhibit her work since her death. We feel honored."

Writing of the Museum De L'Art Brut, Lausanne, Switzerland "This amazing place, with its black-walled galleries is Yankee Stadium for Outsider Art fans. At the heart of the museums vast collection is Jean Dubuffet's own original collection. Only ten percent of the collection is on display at any given time, but the ten percent that we saw was truly amazing. Wolfli, Aloise, Zinelli, Walla, Van Genk, Ted Gordon, Dwight Mackintosh, Judith Scott, and on and on. Don't miss any opportunity to visit this shrine!"

From Educational Media On-Line Reviews:

Outsider: The Life and Art of Judith Scott     Reviewed by Fran Mentch, Cleveland State University

Recommended
 
Date Entered: 2/7/2008

"The documentary Outsider: The Life and Art of Judith Scott begins in an art exhibit, where the large fiber works of Judith Scott are being admired and discussed. When we later see the artist at work it is shocking; her appearance is very different from the image our culture has of popular artists and their public personas. She has Down syndrome and can neither hear nor speak. Most of the film is footage of her working in the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, California. Staff there provide some history and some description of her creative process, but overall, her disabilities and the circumstances of her life are explained in rather veiled terms, with little detail.

Judith Scott’s story illuminates what were our society’s attitudes about the disabled a generation ago. Her deafness went undiscovered for many years, and was mistaken for profound retardation. She spent most of her life in an institution for the developmentally disabled. When her twin reached middle age and reflected on her own life story, she decided it was imperative to move Judith to a group home close to her so that they could share the rest of their lives. Judith was scheduled to attend the Creative Growth Art Center as part of her activities and it was there that she blossomed as an artist.

It is fun and inspiring to watch Judith so focused on her work and clearly enjoying this later stage of life. She developed a flamboyant appearance, with colorful head scarves and accessories, which raises questions about how and why we develop personal style and use it to communicate with the world about who we are.

Because Judith is so creative and compelled to express herself through art, her story is instructive about the nature of human creativity, human intelligence and the meaning of art. The interview with her sister also sheds light on sibling relationships and the fact that middle-age sends many people into reflecting and changing their lives. Students and faculty studying psychology, art, art therapy, occupational therapy and developmental disabilities will all find that Judith’s story pushes them to look at their work in a new way.

Additionally, the film will be useful to art students and faculty learning about “Outsider Art”, which seems to have an increasing presence in contemporary popular culture.

Finally, any non-profit trying to expand its services to include an art center will no doubt find that this film is very persuasive and will help them recruit supporters." 

Disability Aestheics by Tobin Siebers, University of Michigan is dedicated to Judith Scott.  

Film at International House, Philadelphia:"

Wednesday, May 13 at 7:30pm

What's Under Your Hat?

dir. Lola Barrera and Inaki Penafiel, Spain, 2007, video, 75 mins, color

Judith Scott (1943-2005) became a renowned artist - creating abstract, intertwined objects made out of yarn - after an inauspicious start to life, and many years of living in a State institution with her needs and abilities unrecognized and unsupported. Scott's great good fortune was to be born a twin. Her sister Joyce was able eventually to reconnect with her, rescue her from the institution, and introduce her to the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, California, where her artistic expression flourished. Filmmakers Lola Barrera and Julio Medem have produced a film that is engaging, confronting, uplifting, heartbreaking, hopeful, deeply respectful of the art that is its focus, and at times very funny.

Emily Fragos, Poetry Professor at Columbia University, in a letter to Joyce Scott writes:

 "You acted on one decision, to bring your long-lost sister to live with you, and you altered so many lives: Judy's life, your life, your children's lives, the lives of all those who revere and are so inspired by your sister's profound, gorgeous art.  How can we ever thank you?"

Professor Fragos also wrote the following poem on first seeing Judith's work at the Rico-Maresca Gallery in New York.  We thank her for permitting us to reproduce it here:

"Art Brut

Judith Scott, in memoriam 1943-2005

Her bundled woebegones,
Her sheltered primevals,
With a stapler lodged in the brain,
Torso stuffed with a corkscrew,
Sister's lost car keys, child's left shoe,
Or bits of foam, scraps of wood,
And the broken back of a chair,
Give up all hope for a better past.
Judy pulls the living from the dead.
Whatever is at her slippered feet,
Within her ravenous, flower-girl grasp --
The process is unstoppable.
The process is humming."

Emily, thank you so much for sharing this with us.

Writing of her film Outsider: The life and art of Judith Scott, Betsy Bayha says:

"It is a documentary that transports viewers into a realm that is little seen and even less understood - the creative life of an "Outsider" artist."  Adding also that it "delves deeply into the life of a compelling, eccentric and talented individual who has survived in the face of daunting odds."

Art Critic Michael Bonesteel had written:

"Making something out of nothing, or precisely, luring something from the unconscious and giving it material form is the closest thing to real magic there is in this world."

Barbara Lee Smith then observed:

"There is magic in the art and life of Judith Scott.   That she is even making her powerful forms is a happy ending to the grimest of fairy tales."

Quoted from:  Judith Scott: Finding a Voice by Barbara Lee Smith

Judy and her art - specifically the 2005 Yerba Buena show in San Francisco - figures prominently in David Byrne's 2009 book Bicycle Diaries (Viking Press).

If you are going to be in Washington DC this summer:

Announcement: 2010 International VSA arts Education Festival
"Creating a society where people with disabilities can learn through, participate in, and enjoy the arts"

Joyce Wallace Scott, Judith Scott's twin sister, has been invited to address the 2010 International VSA Arts Education Conference on Thursday, June 10th in Washington, DC at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

On the recent occasion of their birthday (1 May) Joyce received many emails dedicated to Judy's memory - a powerful reminder if one were needed, of the esteem in which Judy is held by the art world and by her many admirers.

This announcement has just appeared (3 May, 2010):

VSA presents Exhibitions at The Kennedy Center

• Jun 6 - 20, 2010
• Throughout the Center
• All Day

"Judith Scott
Judith Scott is considered a preeminent "outsider" artist whose fiber works are in some of the most prestigious art collections in the world. As a woman with Down syndrome, who was deaf and did not speak, these sculptures were Scott's most-complex means of communication with the world around her. Scott's works are dense, multilayered, body-like sculptures made out of found materials and yarn. Institutionalized for 35 years with little or no creative freedom, Scott found her artistic voice when her sister moved her to California in 1987. Introduced to art materials at Oakland's Creative Growth Art Center, Scott had a natural aptitude for the tactility of fiber. Over the next 18 years, she created a colorful, prolific body of work. Her story testifies to the resiliency of the creative spirit and the communicative power of art.
Kennedy Center Hall of States"

Touching, Feeling, a recent book by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, carries a photograph of Judy on the frontisp[iece.

The author writes " The photograph on the frontispeice of Touching, Feeling was the catalyst that impelled me to assemble the book in its present form".

Several pages (in half a dozen places throughout the book) are devoted to Judy's work, and includes several interesting analytical insights.

From Ricco Maresca Gallery, New York City

 "Let us imagine an unusual situation.  An artist who worked, producing
soft, three-dimensional, colored objects that are original in form and
expressively powerful. The abstract fiber structures she created were
large, often larger than she was, each involving months of dedicated
work. She applied herself to her creative enterprise with
extraordinary intensity, patience and care. Yet, paradoxically, this
woman possessed no concept of art, no understanding of its meaning and
function. She did not know that she was an artist nor did she
understand that others perceived the objects she created as works of
art. Whatever she was doing she was definitely not concerned with the
making of art. What, then, was she doing? This is the fundamental
question that we seek to answer.

Judith Scott, a woman who was born with Down's syndrome, spent the
last ten years of her life producing a series of totally
non-functional objects, which, to us, appear to be works of sculpture,
except that the notion of sculpture was far beyond her understanding.
As well as being mentally handicapped, Judith could not hear or speak,
and she had little concept of language.  There is no way of asking her
what she was doing, yet her compulsive involvement with the shaping of
forms in space seems to imply that at some level she knew.  Does
serious mental retardation invariably produce the creation of true
works of art? Is it plausible to imagine an artist of stature emerging
in the context of massively impaired intellectual development?
(excerpted from Metamorphosis by John MacGregor)

Scott's technique involved the process of wrapping random objects,
sometimes alone and sometimes put together to make enormous inner
bases, with string, twine, yarn, paper towels, and other materials,
all of varying color, weight and texture. Though varying in size,
shape and color scheme, all of Scott's pieces adhered to her fixation
upon the process of wrapping and securing her objects within a cocoon
of her own design.
It was only after she was essentially rescued from the institutional
environment of housing for the mentally ill, and enrolled at the
Creative Growth Art Center in California , that Scott's abilities began
to take shape. Having finally been exposed to art making, her talents
emerged with a fervor that never waned throughout the years. Each
piece was a time-intensive production utilizing an enormous amount of
materials, concentration and patience. Judith's intensity yielded
these mysterious and beautiful works that metamorphosize cast-away
objects into sculptures with a distinct presence. Because Judith could
not speak or hear, her internal dialogue was much like her artwork-
hidden and most likely multi-dimensionally. Her exterior was colorful,
interesting, but strong."

A Quote from:

http://blog.art21.org/2009/11/09/letter-from-london-outside-in/

  Scott’s works – bulbous, hanging forms, like internal organs or musical instruments, tightly bound in coloured threads – seem unwilling to be described as sculpture. Although artistic kinship can be found in the work of Franz West or Louise Bourgeois, the fact that Scott, who died in 2005, was a deaf woman with Down’s Syndrome who came to art making late in life via Creative Growth, transforms the viewer’s experience. So complete and insistent is Scott’s work that it renders artistic parallels somewhat futile, and comparable artists mannered.

Penny Green, chairman of the UK charity Down Syndrome heart group, wrote the following moving tribute to Judy on her blog (http://dhgorguk.blogspot.com/2010/01/on-7th-day-of-christmas-id-like-to.html)

Life itself changes the 'Meaning of Life'

Friday, 1 January 2010

On the 7th day of Christmas I'd like to introduce ...

the late Judith Scott

  Although a sad story, I think this highlights how things have progressed for people with Down's Syndrome and as such I wanted to share it with you and thought it deserved a place here.  I also think that ultimately it had a happy ending which makes it worth reading.

Judith and twin sister Joyce were born on May 1st 1943 and for their first 7½ years they were virtually inseparable,  Then it was time for school and their parents were told that Judith was ineducable and recommended to place her in an institution.  Joyce awoke one morning to find the bed they shared was empty and the next time she saw Judith was in the institution.

  At the institution following oral testing, Judith was assessed as having an IQ of only 30 and was therefore not offered any training.  Without Joyce, her childhood interpreter, she became severely alienated and developed behavioral issues but it was to be years before she was diagnosed as severely deaf explaining her communication problems.  Although the twins saw each other a few more times, eventually they lost contact.

  In 1985, Joyce realised that by becoming her sisters legal guardian they could once again be close and after a struggle to locate her, Judith finally moved to California where she started going to the Creative Growth Art Center .  At first she was fairly uninterested in paint but a few months later she attended a fiber art class and suddenly a whole new world of expression opened up for Judith.  She was given complete freedom to choose her own materials and taking objects she would wrap them in carefully selected colored yarns to create diverse sculptures in many different shapes.  Many of her works also feature pairs indicating that her experience as a twin played an important part in her life.

 Judith died peacefully in her sister’s arms at the age of 61, having outlived her life expectancy at birth by almost fifty years.  

 Having already corresponded briefly with Joyce, I was excited to unexpectedly meet her at the World Congress in Dublin and to have the opportunity to view Outsider a film about Judith's life and work.  It was incredibly emotional to see her and Joyce together and the wonderful connection between them and wonderful to know that after the sadness of many years of separation that they were eventually reunited and shared quality time together.   You can read more of their incredible story and Judith's work here. 

Benny said...

Penny,
This is a great story, i have never heard about it before. it is inspiring, this explains that there is hope for every Down Syndrome kid, young adult and the adult.I hope their families will begin to accept the kids, also allow them to communicate with the general world.There is so much potentials embedded in each one of them. This story needs to appear in every D.S webpage.It will help so many families.
Benny

1 January 2010 10:26

From: http://www.purestyleonline.com/blog/
"I really really recommend the  visual magic at The Museum of Everything, showing unseen artists, who create their work outside the eyes and ears of the art world. Take Judith Scott,  who  made sculpture from household objects entirely hidden by being wound-about over and over by wool and yarn.  Scott had Down’s syndrome, and only communicated through these things. They’re very convincing,  together with  the spirit drawings of medium Madge Gill, and the ceramic recycled kingdom of Indian roads worker Nek Chand. The works are unintentional, delicate and  profound."

This interesting image, which includes one of Judy's sculptures, belongs to the American Visionary Art Museum, was recently posted on Flickr

Superfest International Disability Film Festival

SUPERFEST XXVII WINNERS   

Excellence Awards   

• Outsider: The Life and Art of Judith Scott[26 min.] Producer: Betsy Bayha, U.S.  

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Last Update: 03/05/10
Web Author: Arachne Enterprises
LINKS: Alogny - Joyce Scott - Judith Scott – JSTAF - Retreats for Writers - John Cooke - Bali Children’s Project