Serena Scott, Untitled (attracted), 2019

SERENA SCOTT

Untitled (attracted), 2019

Ink on paper

Museum Purchase, Selected by Olivia Olson-Roberts, Susan Prier, Mollie Schottstaedt, and Jenny Varner, students in the Mills College Fall 2021 Museum Studies Workshop, 2021.3.4

Serena Scott is an American artist who has been working with NIAD Art Center, a Richmond-based gallery that works with artists with developmental disabilities, since 2018. Scott’s work features repetitive mark making, usually with black ink on white paper. Each piece is one-of-a-kind and the product of careful and thoughtful lettering. The four pieces in the exhibition each feature a singular word written over and over until it fills the page. Each of the words featured, “Attracted”, “Happening”, “Fruit”, and “Close”, have feminine undertones. Scott’s use of repetitive lettering mirrors the repetitive nature of much of women’s labor. Her use of the same word forces the viewer to slow down and consider the deeper meanings of these feminized words.

—O. O. Roberts