Metamorphosis

Résumé du livre

Judith Scott, a sixty year old woman with Down's Syndrome, has spent the past fifteen years producing a series of totally non-functional objects - obsessively wrapped, knotted, braided fiber masses revealing hints of concealed scavenged objects, pieces which loom large and wraithlike or sit as small tightly wound secrets. Her works, to us, appear to be works of Outsider Art sculpture, except that the notion of sculpture is far beyond her understanding. As well as being mentally disabled, Judith 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. Does 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? Metamorphosis charts a remarkable body of work over a period of 12 years in the Creative Growth Art Center studio in downtown Oakland, California. The inner world of an Outsider artist is revealed in Judith Scott's fiber sculptures and made accessible to the reader by the poetic prose of author John MacGregor.