Name Elizabeth Scott | Children Joyce J. Scott | |
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Elizabeth Talford Scott (February 7, 1916 – April 25, 2011) was an American folk artist, known for her quilts.
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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. Both her parents made quilts, and Elizabeth learned from them. Her father was a railroad worker who collected fabric scraps in his travels. In 1940, Elizabeth moved to Baltimore, Maryland.
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. Her quilts are dense compositions, often abstract and asymmetrical, with references to family rituals and stories. Her quilts were exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Walters Art Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, Anacostia Museum, and the Museum of Biblical Art.
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.
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. In 2014, Elizabeth Talford Scott was one of three artists featured in a show titled "The In and Outsiders" at the Galerie Myrtis in Baltimore.