Number 19: June 2015: Disability
Cover art: © Judith Scott, Untitled, 2004. Courtesy of Creative Growth Art Center.
Shelley Tremain writes about the cover art: The background of the photo is black. The artwork in the photo is a sculpture comprised of a bright blue wooden chair with four legs and a back, some parts of which are wrapped in fabric and wool of assorted colours. Various items, including an upturned basket on the seat of the chair and a white wheel rim that sits upright against the back of the chair, are tied to the chair with criss-crossing and overlapping strands of multicoloured fabric, wool, string, and paper. The sculpture was created by Judith Scott, a fiber artist who died in 2005, at the age of 61. Scott, who was deaf and had Down Syndrome, was institutionalized from age seven until her early forties and began to produce her amazing sculptures and other art only after her twin sister removed her from the institution and introduced her to Creative Growth, a centre for disabled artists located in Oakland, CA. From December 2014-March 2015, the Brooklyn Museum held a retrospective of Scott's work. A review of that retrospective show with a slide show of some of Scott's work appeared in The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/05/arts/design/judith-scotts-enigmatic-sculptures-at-the-brooklyn-museum.html.