Elizabeth Talford Scott

Elizabeth Talford Scott (February 7, 1916 – April 25, 2011) was an American folk artist, known for her quilts.

Early life

Elizabeth Caldwell was born on a plantation near Chester, South Carolina, where her family were sharecroppers, and her grandparents had been born into slavery.[1] Both her parents made quilts, and Elizabeth learned from them. Her father was a railroad worker who collected fabric scraps in his travels.[2] In 1940, Elizabeth moved to Baltimore, Maryland.[3]

Career

In Baltimore Elizabeth Scott was a domestic servant, a nanny, and a cook. She retired from that work in 1970 and began to make art quilts, often incorporating embroidery, beadwork, and found objects such as buttons and shells.[4] Her quilts are dense compositions, often abstract and asymmetrical, with references to family rituals and stories.[5] Her quilts were exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts,[6] the Walters Art Museum,[7] the Baltimore Museum of Art,[8] Anacostia Museum,[9] and the Museum of Biblical Art.[10]

In 1987, Scott received the Women's Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1998, the Maryland Institute College of Art held a retrospective of Scott's work, titled "Eyewinker, Tumbleturds and Candlebugs," curated by George Ciscle. That show toured to the Smithsonian and to the New England Quilt Museum.[11][12]

Personal life and legacy

Elizabeth Caldwell married Charlie Scott Jr. They had one daughter, artist Joyce J. Scott (b. 1948). Charlie Scott Jr. died in 2005, and Elizabeth Talford Scott died in 2011, age 95.[13]

References
  1. Leslie King Hammond, "Identifying Spaces of Blackness: The Aesthetics of Resistance and Identity in American Plantation Art," in Angela D. Mack and Stephen G. Hoffius, eds., Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art (University of South Carolina Press 2008): 72. ISBN 1570037205
  2. Dorothy S. Boulware, "The Making of an African-American Quilt," Afro-American Red Star (January 24, 1998): B1.
  3. Jacques Kelly, Elizabeth Scott, Quilt Maker, Died," Baltimore Sun (May 3, 2011).
  4. John Dorsey, "The Fabric of Memory: Elizabeth Talford Scott's Quilts Teem with History, Emotion and Art," Baltimore Sun (January 18, 1998).
  5. Chezia Thompson-Cager, "Folk Realities and Bourgeois Fantasies: Four African-American Maryland Artists," Link 4(April 30, 2000): 71.
  6. Maria Gallagher, "The Scotts Reap What they Sew: Artists are Influenced by Slavery, African-American Themes," Daily News (September 8, 1989).
  7. "The Walters Art Museum," Avenue News (February 7, 2012).
  8. Edward J. Sozanski, "Pieces of the Past in Story Quilts: 'Stitching Memories,' a Baltimore Display of the Work of Black Quilters, Celebrates a Distinctive Approach to the Art," Philadelphia Inquirer (July 29, 1990).
  9. "Anacostia Museum," The Capital, (November 13, 1998): 63. via Newspapers.com
  10. Clarence V. Reynolds, "Ashe to Amen," Network Journal 20(2)(March/April 2013): 54-55.
  11. Elizabeth Talford Scott and George Ciscle, Eyewinkers, Tumbleturds and Candlebugs: The Art of Elizabeth Talford Scott (Maryland Institute, College of Art 1998).
  12. Marty Katz, "Going Local, the Baltimore Museum Loosens Up," New York Times (February 9, 2000): E2.
  13. Jacques Kelly, Elizabeth Scott, Quilt Maker, Died," Baltimore Sun (May 3, 2011).
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