Believe I’ve Been Sanctified
1991
Site-Specific Installation
Photograph: John McWilliams,
Spoleto Festival for the Arts,
Charleston, South Carolina

Scott was one of sixteen international artists commissioned by the Spoleto Festival for the Arts to create artworks about the history of the South for sites throughout Charleston, South Carolina. Scott selected the ruined steps and columns of the former Charleston Museum, originally a Confederate veterans’ reunion hall, which burned in 1981.

Long strands of beaded branches turn the classical pillars into weeping willows, suggesting a plantation during slavery. A figure rises above the fire, perhaps signifying the victims of lynching and their rebirth, like a phoenix rising. “Sanctified” is a term used by the Pentecostal Church meaning purification by fire and being blessed by God.

Scott says, “To make a difference in the lives of children, we must be much more honest and up front with them about the society we’ve created. I don’t believe in shielding children from issues they are seeing every day. It is smarter, especially for an institution that has a charge to educate, to say ‘What is this about?’”

“There once was a place where men were taken to die—their heads were severed and stuck on poles, hidden in leaves, so only the birds would see and remember.”