Works of art made with fibers can be enjoyed on multiple levels: from the materials and techniques employed to their colours or the specificity of weave; from their sizes and shape to the structural and tactile results that they produce.
The fiber-based works of Judith Scott - currently on display at the first comprehensive retrospective about her work at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum in New York - can be admired on further and more intriguing levels.
Judith Scott was born in 1943 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Deaf, mute, and with Down syndrome, Judith was separated from her twin sister Joyce when she turned seven and a half, and sent to an institution for the mentally retarded (her deafness was diagnosed only many years later). Separation affected both of them and Judith remained in the institution until the mid-'80s when Joyce became her guardian.
In 1987 Judith started attending the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, California, an art program for artists with developmental and physical disabilities. Her first experiments with paint were not remarkable, but things changed when she attended a fiber art class by visiting artist Sylvia Seventy.Scott started sculpting in a remarkably unique way: she would take random objects (such as a shopping cart, wire hangers, a chair and several tools) found at the Center and wrap them in coloured yarns.
The process was more or less the same for all the pieces: a core object was wrapped up or hidden under many layers of multi-coloured yarn, cord, ribbon, rope and other fibers. The result was a three-dimensional sculpture - developed over weeks or months - that may be characterised by softer lines and curves or by spiked edges.
Scott's work entered the permanent collections of many museums all over the world, she was included in several exhibitions and her life inspired several documentaries including "Outsider: The Life and Art of Judith Scott" by Betsy Bayha, "¿Qué tienes debajo del sombrero?" (What's under your hat?) by Lola Barrera and Iñaki Peñafiel and "Les cocons magiques de Judith Scott" by Philippe Lespinasse, filmed a few weeks before Scott's died at her sister's home at the age of 61.
Organised by Catherine J. Morris, Sackler Family Curator for the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, and Matthew Higgs, artist and Director/Chief Curator of White Columns, New York, "Judith Scott - Bound and Unbound" (until 29th March 2015) is a journey of discovery through Scott's works (she created over 200 in 18 years; she died in 2005) and also includes the first pieces she made - wooden sticks held together with yarn, and cloth, with beads as embellishments.
Some of them look like cocoons, others like dismembered body parts, elongated totemic poles, modern idols or contemporary talismans. In some cases she also produced pairs, almost hinting at her condition of being a twin.
At times monumental, her haunting, fiber sculptures are characterised by repetition and accumulation, and a will to give simple every day objects such as a chair or an umbrella a new identity, hiding and packing them away.
Her bizarre cocoons could represent wombs or mummified objects that maybe hinted at her condition and at her impossibility of communicating. There have indeed been critics who suggested she was learning how to speak through her objects: if that was the case, her sculptures could be seen as bits and pieces of sentences and dialogues, stories built by sewing, spinning, knitting and weaving with her hands (it should be noted that her pieces display some craftsmanship skills as well) and with different materials to come up with a bright and colourful visual language.
The unopened bundles remain Judith's secret gifts to the world: some of the sculptures have been x-rayed disclosing multiple bits and pieces hidden inside the layers of yarns (when the yarns weren't available she employed tons of ripped and knotted paper towels borrowed from the Center's kitchen or bathroom...), almost a final confirmation of her complex and multi-layered personality, revealed also in her passion for headdresses, hats and turbans.
Works produced by artists living on society's fringes or in relative isolation are usually filed under outsider art, but it is unquestionable that, in their liminal condition, many of them produce amazing works that are infinitely more fun, puzzling, warm and touching than the cold, clinical and superficial pieces of contemporary art favoured by a fashionable pack of people (think about Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst's...) and idolised by a society that professes itself "normal", but that it proves as profoundly "disabled" at spotting humanity and the complexities of the human soul in art.
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