Feature Articles


September Issue 1999

SECCA Presents Eyewinkers, Tumbleturds and Candlebugs: The Art of Elizabeth Talford Scott

The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), in Winston-Salem, NC, will present Eyewinkers, Tumbleturds and Candlebugs: The Art of Elizabeth Talford Scott beginning Oct. 23 and continuing through Feb. 6. Organized by the Maryland Institute College of Art, the exhibition is the first ever retrospective of quiltmaker Elizabeth Talford Scott's highly acclaimed artistic career. The exhibition includes over 45 quilts dating from 1930 - 1997.

Elizabeth Talford Scott was born in 1916 near Chester, SC, the sixth of fourteen children. She learned the art of quiltmaking from her mother and began her first quilt at the age of nine. Upon moving to Baltimore in the 1940s, she postponed her artwork to work as a domestic caterer, caretaker and mother. It was not until the 1970s, with the encouragement of her daughter and friends, that she began to quilt again. Her creations broke free of the traditional concept of quiltmaking and helped bridge the gap between "high" and "low" art.

Scott's artwork clearly shows the deeply rooted traditions of Africans' past and evokes new visual traditions through the display of bright colors, complex patterns, buttons, shells, bones and other unexpected materials. "African-American artistry is now recognized as a part of a critical voice in the larger definition of what constitutes an American cultural and artistic legacy," says George Ciscle, guest curator for the exhibition. During the last twenty years, Scott has exhibited in conjunction with her daughter, Joyce Scott, a mixed media performance artist, in galleries along the east coast including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum of Harlem and the Smithsonian Institute.

For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings or call the center at 336/725-1904.

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