Elizabeth Talford Scott: 1916 – 2011

  • Elizabeth Caldwell Talford Scott (b.1916- d.2011) was born near Chester, South Carolina on the land her parents worked as sharecroppers,...

    Elizabeth Caldwell Talford Scott (b.1916- d.2011) was born near Chester, South Carolina on the land her parents worked as sharecroppers, and where previously her grandparents were held as enslaved people. The sixth of fourteen children who lived on the Blackstock Plantation, the [then] young Elizabeth was trained by family members to repurpose scrapped materials into usable resources in the interest of basic survival needs. Quilting was a familiar part of the black American experience, especially in the South. It was a keystone for innovation, upcycling, expression, and for passing historical narratives from one generation to the next. Talford-Scott honed those quilting skills at a young age, though her invention within the medium would develop over many years, moving away from domestic function into improvisational, sculptural wall hangings that live squarely within the vernacular of fine art.

     

    Migrating to Baltimore in the early 1940s, Elizabeth and her [then] partner, Charlie Scott, Jr., welcomed into the world their daughter, the now celebrated artist and MacArthur fellow Dr. Joyce J. Scott. During this period, Elizabeth Scott worked in food services, as a hired caregiver for other people’s children, and as a single mother caring for her own child. With limited time in her demanding work schedule, Elizabeth Scott took a hiatus from quilting, and it was not until her daughter was self-sufficient in the 1970s that the artist returned to her creative practice with dedication, vigor, and potency. Developing techniques that acknowledged her family history yet moved beyond, Scott began to innovate, creating fiber works that incorporated stones, buttons, shells, bones, sequence, beads, knotted material, glass, and other unconventional objects amassed in bright, bold, and lively compositions that boast heavily layered surfaces of organic, unstructured shapes much richer in detail than many distinguished contemporary paintings.

     

    Immersed and embedded within the lush surfaces of these works live personal and worldly narratives, and an alphabet of ancestral symbols that tell us as much about aesthetics as they do about the artist’s history. Making references to flowers, animals, intergalactic astronomy, insects, sea creatures, monsters, fantastical beings, dreams, superstitions, and good luck charms, Talford-Scott’s objects converge in a cacophony of pure visual energy where commonplace materials are metamorphosed into lessons on abstract design informed by all that she could see and imagine.

  • During her lifetime, although she exhibited infrequently, Elizabeth presented her work in national venues including The Studio Museum of Harlem,...
    Photo: Courtesy Joyce J. Scott

    During her lifetime, although she exhibited infrequently, Elizabeth presented her work in national venues including The Studio Museum of Harlem, NY; The Museum of American Folk Art, NY; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. In 1987, Elizabeth Talford Scott was bequeathed the Women’s Caucus Award for Outstanding Achievements in the Visual Arts. In 1998 she was the subject of a retrospective exhibition curated by George Ciscle titled Eyewinkers, Tumbleturds, and Candlebugs: The Art of Elizabeth Talford Scott that opened at the Maryland Institute College of Art and traveled to the Smithsonian Institution’s Anacostia Community Museum in Washington, DC among other venues in New England and North Carolina. And while the artist regularly produced workshops, frequently collaborating with her daughter Joyce J. Scott with an aim to teach young artists techniques, her presence in the larger art world was slim because at that time, there simply was close to no space carved out for black, female makers who worked in fiber.

     

    Elizabeth Talford Scott died in 2011. In 2019, the estate management was awarded to Goya Contemporary Gallery. In that same year, E.T. Scott was the joint subject of the exhibition  “Reality, Times Two: Joyce J. Scott & Elizabeth Talford Scott” at Goya Contemporary Gallery and “Hitching Their Dreams to Untamed Stars: Joyce J. Scott & Elizabeth Talford Scott” at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The following year, Goya Contemporary mounted the artist’s first solo show with the gallery titled “Upside-Downwards.” In 2021, Talford-Scott was the subject of Goya Contemporary’s solo-artist booth at The Armory Show, and was subsequently listed as one of the top-10 booths to see by The New York Time’s coverage of the fair. Major works have recently entered the collections of the Philbrook Museum, Toledo Museum, Mint Museum, Baltimore Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Denver Art Museum, and Maryland Center for History & Culture.

     

    Elizabeth Talford Scott’s posthumous success points to the long-standing, systemic structures that failed to recognize the work of significant female makers in their lifetimes, yet encouragingly, many institutions have newly incited reinvestigations into these overlooked, yet important artistic practices. Talford-Scott’s practice is unlike others, and she has been cited by a sundry of celebrated contemporary artists as an influence; counting her own daughter, Joyce J. Scott, among those she inspired. E.T. Scott’s works feel as fresh and relevant today as the days they were constructed, proving Scott a significant artist who was not only of her time, but whose work is timeless.       © 2021

  • Selected Public Collections Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore Banneker-Douglass Museum, Annapolis Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington Denver Art Museum, Denver Johns...
    © Carl Clark, Courtesy Linda Day Clark

    Selected Public Collections

    Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore

    Banneker-Douglass Museum, Annapolis

    Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

    Denver Art Museum, Denver

    Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore

    Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore

    Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore

    Maryland Center for History & Culture, Baltimore

    Mint Museum, Charlotte

    Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson

    Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

    National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

    Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa

    Reginald F. Lewis Museum, Baltimore

    Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence

    Shah Garg Collection

    Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo

    Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro

  • Selected Exhibitions

    2024-2025

    Of Salt and Spirit: Black Quilters in the American South, Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS

     

    2024

    Stitched Memories: Celebrating Elizabeth Talford Scott, The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD

    Elizabeth Talford Scott: '98 til Infinity, Cary Beth Cryor Gallery, Coppin State University, Baltimore, MD

    Material & Memories: Elizabeth Talford Scott and the Crazy Quilt Tradition, Maryland Center for History and Culture, Baltimore, MD

    American Africanisms: The Musings of Elizabeth Talford Scott, James E. Lewis Museum of Art at Morgan State University,

    Baltimore, MD

    Kaleidoscope: Changing Perspectives, The Peale, Baltimore, MD

    Reverberations: Disruption and Healing Through the Hands of Elizabeth Talford Scott, George Peabody Library, Johns Hopkins

    University Sheridan Libraries, Baltimore, MD

    Black Woman Genius: Elizabeth Talford Scott- Tapestries of Generations, Reginald F. Lewis Museum, Baltimore, MD

    Transcending Tradition: The Art of Elizabeth Talford Scott and the MICA Quilt Group, Decker Gallery, Maryland Institute College of

    Art, Baltimore, MD

     

    2023-2025

    Making Their Mark, Shah Garg Foundation, New York, NY. Curator: Cecilia Alemani; Traveling to the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA, co-curated by Margot Norton; Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, MO, co-curated by Sabine Eckmann (catalogue)

     

    2023-2024    

    Eyewinkers, Tumbleturds and Candlebugs: The Art of Elizabeth Talford Scott, the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD

    Making Room: Familiar Art, New Stories, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC 

     

    2023    

    Trade & Transformation, Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK

    Both Sides Now: The Spirituality, Resilience, and Innovation of Elizabeth Talford Scott, Goya Contemporary, Baltimore, MD

     

    2021    

    The Armory Show, presented by Goya Contemporary, New York, NY (solo booth)

     

    2020-2021    

    Textile Gallery, The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC

     

    2020    

    Elizabeth Talford Scott: Upside Downwards, Goya Contemporary, Baltimore, MD

     

    2019    

    Hitching Their Dreams to Untamed Stars: Joyce J. Scott and Elizabeth Talford Scott, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore,

    MD, Curator: Cecilia Wichmann

    REALITY, Times Two: Joyce J. Scott & Elizabeth Talford Scott, Goya Contemporary, Baltimore, MD, Curator: Amy Eva Raehse

    (catalogue)

     

    2017-2018   

    Joyce J. Scott: Harriet Tubman and Other Truths, Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton Township, NJ. Curators: Lowery Stokes Sims &

    Patterson Sims (catalogue)

     

    2016    

    Baltimore Masters Art of the Ancestors, The Fredrick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Museum, Baltimore, MD

     

    2011-2012

    Prospect.2: Works by Joyce J. Scott and Nick Cave, Newcomb Art Gallery, Tulane University, Woldenberg Art Center,

    New Orleans, LA. Curators: Dan Camron and Sally Main

     

    2003

    Magic Markers, Objects of Transformation, Des Moines Art Center, IA 

     

    1998    

    Eyewinkers, Tumbleturds and Candlebugs: The Art of Elizabeth Talford Scott, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD

    Traveled to: Smithsonian Institute, Anacostia Community Museum, Washington, DC; New England Quilt Museum, Lowell, MA; Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, NC. Curator: George Ciscle. (catalogue)

     

    1997    

    Crossing the Threshold, Steinbaum Krauss Gallery, New York, NY

    You Are Here, Artscape, Baltimore, MD

     

    1995    

    Our Story, Camille Love Gallery, Atlanta, GA

    Elizabeth T. Scott and Joyce J. Scott, Parish Gallery, Washington, DC

    Relatively Speaking: Mothers and Daughters in Art, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island, NY

     

    1994    

    Continuing Innovations: Contemporary American Quilt Art, Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, IN

     

    1993    

    Joyce Scott and Elizabeth Talford Scott, Cardinal Gallery, Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts, Annapolis, MD

    Signs and Symbols: African Images in African American Quilts, American Folk Art Museum, New York, NY

    USA Today in Fiber Art, Nederlands Textielmuseum, Tilburg, Netherlands

     

    1992    

    Walk a Mile in My Shoes: Works by Elizabeth T. Scott and Joyce J. Scott, Afro American Historical and Cultural Museum,

    Philadelphia, PA

    Masters, Mentors, and Makers, Artscape, Baltimore, MD

    Dolls by Afro-American Artists, Diggs Gallery, Winston-Salem State University, NC

     

    1990    

    The Definitive Contemporary American Quilt, Steinbaum Krauss Gallery, New York, NY 

    Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD

     

    1989    

    Stitched Stories, Washington College, Chestertown, MD

    Stitching Memories: African American Story Quilts, Checkwood Museum, Nashville, TN

    Family Traditions: Recent Work by Elizabeth T. and Joyce J. Scott, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA

     

    1988    

    Visions/Divisions, Eubie Blake Cultural Center, Baltimore, MD

     

    1986    

    Academy of the Arts, Easton, MD

     

    1985    

    The Intuitive Eye, Maryland Art Place, Baltimore, MD

    Black Expressions, Torpedo Factory, Alexandria, VA

     

    1984    

    Exceptions, Pratt Manhattan Center Gallery, New York, NY

     

    1982    

    Myth and Ritual: A Survey of African American Art, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY. Curator: Dr. Leslie King Hammond

    Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

     

    1981    

    Quilts by Joyce and Elizabeth Scott, Gallery 409, Baltimore, MD

     

    1979    

    Stitched Stories, Mount St. Mary's College, Emmitsburg, MD

    Impact '79: Afro-American Women Artists, Florida A&M University, Tallahassee, FL

     

    1978    

    Commission of Afro-American History and Culture, Baltimore, MD

     

    1977    

    Folk Life Festival, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC

     

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