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INTUIT:
The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art
756 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Chicago, IL 60622
information: intuit@art.org
phone: 312.243.9088
fax: 312.243.9089
Hours:
Wed. - Sat. noon to five
Admission is free
back to past exhibits & programs
Press release:
Intuit to present "Metamorphosis: The Fiber Art of Judith Scott"
Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art will present Metamorphosis: The Fiber Art of Judith Scott, an exhibition featuring the obsessive yarn bundles of a 57-year-old California woman with Down’s syndrome. The exhibit opens on September 8, 2000, and will run through November 25, at Intuit, 756 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago. The exhibit is free and open to the public from noon to 5 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday. An opening reception will be held from 5 to 8 p.m. on Friday, September 8, at Intuit.
Judith Scott has spent more than a dozen years producing a series of totally non-functional objects which appear to be works of sculpture, except that the notion of sculpture is far beyond her notion of understanding. As well as being mentally handicapped, Scott cannot hear or speak, and she has little concept of language. There is no way of asking her what she is doing, yet her compulsive involvement with the shaping of forms in space seems to imply that at some level she knows.
Scott nimbly weaves strands of yarn and fabric into objects of remarkable, mysterious beauty, cocooning myriad objects into obscurity. She creates soft, three-dimensional, colored objects that are original in form and expressively powerful. Her abstract fiber sculptures are often larger than she is, each involving months of dedicated work. Scott is very independent and self-directed, and never repeats a form or color scheme. She has produced a remarkable body of wrapped sculptures made with armatures of bamboo slats or other discarded materials, wrapped with knotted cloth or yarn. She has been included in many Bay Area exhibitions and is in the permanent collection of the L’Aracine Musee de Art Brut in Paris, France.
Scott applies herself to her creative enterprise with extraordinary intensity, patience, and care, working steadily and with great dedication. Yet, paradoxically, Scott possess no concept of art, no understanding of its meaning and function. She does not know that she is an artist, nor does she understand that the objects she creates are perceived by others as works of art. Metamorphosis: The Fiber Art of Judith Scott poses the questions: Does serious mental retardation invariably preclude 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?
Scott’s art is nurtured through programs at the Creative Growth Art Center in downtown Oakland, California. The Creative Growth Art Center has a well-deserved international reputation for the quality of its specialized programs and the work of its studio artists. The mission of the organization is to provide an environment where the visual arts can flourish, where people with disabilities have opportunities for creative expression and can achieve it at the highest level. Scott is one of 120 severely disabled artists who are currently part of the Creative Growth Art Center studio.
On view concurrently with Metamorphosis: The Fiber Art of Judith Scott, is the ongoing exhibit, American Masters, which features 11 of the 20th century’s preeminent outsider artists, in Intuit’s back gallery, including Henry Darger, Howard Finster, William Hawkins, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Martin Ramirez, A.G. Rizzoli, Simon Rodia, Drossos Skyllas, Bill Traylor, Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, and Joseph Yoakum.
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