Meet Artist Marcie Scudder
December 19, 2023
Marcie Scudder is on an artistic journey of discovery.
Text by Robert Kiener
As Stowe-based artist Marcie Scudder walks through the beautiful, lush gardens that surround her hillside home, she pauses to point out the poppies, forget-me-nots, black-eyed Susans, and other flowers that have inspired her latest creations. âIâm so lucky to be surrounded by beautiful flowers like these, as well as the rest of Vermontâs gorgeous landscape,â she says. âI always knew I had to incorporate these colors, shapes, and forms into my artwork.â
After working as an architect in Newton, Massachusetts, for twenty-five years, Scudder retired and moved to the home she had designed for her mother in Stowe. An accomplished fine art photographer, she was hungry for a change and began studying for an MFA at Maine Media Workshops + College. âI loved photography, but I felt I needed a new artistic perspective, a new direction,â she explains.
That new direction led her on a journey from two dimensions to three, from photography to paper sculpture. âIt was so liberating to free myself from photographyâs limited two-dimensional world and explore the three-dimensional world of paper sculptures,â she explains.
Scudder, however, did not abandon photography. Rather, she has used it as the basis, or the starting point, for her new hanging quilt-like paper sculptural creations. She creates these by printing her own photographs, cutting them up, folding them into complex origami-like units, then sewing them together into flowing three-dimensional abstract paper sculptures. The sculptures vary in shape and proportion, from pieces that could fit on a tabletop to room-size installations that reach from floor to ceiling.
Scudderâs works are layered with meaning and rich with metaphor. For example, one of her paper
installations, My Motherâs Garden, is comprised of scores of folded photos of flowers she photographed from her motherâs own garden. âI wanted to remind us that we are all our mothersâ gardens,â she explains. âWe grow and bloom and have children that also become parents. We are all the seeds that our mothers planted.â
As she sits at her worktable in her studio that overlooks a verdant landscape, she admits, âIâm not yet sure what this next sculpture will be. But I am happy to let my mind and hands wander until I connect with some essential truth. Itâs how I learn. Itâs how I feel.â
EDITORâS NOTE: To see more of Marcie Scudderâs work, visit marciescudder.com.
Share
You must be logged in to post a comment.