Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:
Judith Scott (1943–2005), American fiber sculptor, was born in Columbus, Ohio, with Down syndrome. Her twin sister, Joyce, tells their joint story in the memoir “Entwined: Sisters and Secrets in the Silent World of Artist Judith Scott” (Beacon Press, $21.04).
For their first several years, the two were inseparable, playing in their backyard sandbox, collecting pebbles and leaves. But in those days, children with developmental disabilities — and their families — were stigmatized and often shunned.
One day Joyce woke, and Judith was gone, spirited away by her parents to a “home.” Unknown to her family, Judith was also deaf, a fact they did not learn until she had been institutionalized for many years.
READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.
hi heather!
oh you wrote beautiful about judith and joyce.it gives me such a surge of love for the right things such as art.expression in the unlikely places.so much silence.what that must have cost her!
incredible.
thanks!
Yes, Tina, a life–really two lives–that were/are so mysterious and moving. I think of all the unrealized potential of those who are “nothing” in the eyes of the world…of what goes in in that silence…
yea. you have to completely change your thinking and go down to a much humble place. i wish i could. but – you know- too much performing, silence and something going on in it, is a wish.desire reveals design they say.
but i imagine a silence filled, but mostly silence is depression, and hard to carry.
but, with God everything works together for good, with God.and its not a leaning back and saying, God will do. it is a seeking, like judith was seeking, i think, in her silence.she was seeking a way, and then a it came to her- the salvation.
sometimes you just want to speed time forward, to the moment when your salvation comes, too.
Oh Tina, do we EVER want to speed things up, the more so as we get older and realize in a whole new way that our time on earth is limited and no matter which way we cut it, short!…The seed grows in darkness…right, such a mystery, the “voice” that was getting ready to give expression to itself in the inner silence of Judith Scott…
Wonderful article, I shared it with several friends…