BIOGRAPHY

In the high plateaus along the Rio Orinoco of Venezuela and Brazil, the double canopy of the Amazon jungle is like an unending sea of green, a world of rising mist and foliage so thick that from the jungle floor the landscape is without horizon. In the early evening, just at dusk, a curious quiet would fall over the jungle and Don Pedro, the shaman of the Soto people of the Makiratari Indians, would lead the entire village to the river's edge, where all would stand in quiet attention. Only the sound of running water could be heard until Don Pedro would bring a flute to his mouth and blow a two note call. Instantaneously his call was answered in one cacophonous symphony of animal and insect sounds. In 1968, the young painter Sam Scott was witness to and participant in this evening ritual. Sam Scott, the ethnographic artist for the expedition, had been invited by the University of Michigan, the United States Atomic Energy Commission, and the Instituto Venezueleño de Investigaciónes Cientificas to study the effect of atomic radiation upon these extremely isolated natives of the Rio Orinoco.

The irony of Sam Scott's life with the Brazilian Indians was that it came at precisely the same period of time when most American men of his age were being sent to the jungles of Viet Nam to experience the horrors of war. By contrast, Scott was sent to live among the peaceful Makiratari, where he became witness to the Eden-like existence of man living in accord with nature.

Sam Scott arrived in the Amazon with an already established sense of political awareness. As a painter completing his Master of Fine Arts degree, he had left behind in his Baltimore studio a group of anti-war paintings, including War Chant which had been praised by both Grace Hartigan and Philip Guston. Even before his graduate studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Scott had pursued a liberal education; first at Kenyon College, where he studied philosophy and religion before transferring to the University of Michigan as an art major. In 1962, when the University of Michigan fired the sculptor Joseph Goto, John Lopez and Sam Scott quit in protest and left for Italy, where they lived in Supino making sculpture and restoring a house. While in Italy, Sam had his first one-man exhibition of drawings at La Saletta Gallery in Frosinone and another exhibition at Gli Ciocari Gallery in Rome. But his year in the Amazon, where he produced the documentary film Raisins and Almonds, was pivotal and life shaping; a confirmation and a bridge to his life and art.

When Sam Scott returned to Baltimore from the Amazon, the shock of re-entering an American city was disturbing. It took months for him to adjust. He moved to a small apartment above the Wigwam Bar, slept on the floor, and for the first weeks of his return only left his room out of necessity. The raucous mechanical noise of the city was disorienting. By the late 1960s, in large measure out of a disgust for the Viet Nam War, an anxiety and cynicism was beginning to take hold in American cities. Nonetheless, there also existed a kind of romantic spirit about the inner city and the studio life of the cold-water flat. Sam and a group of his friends had rented an old sailmaker's sweatshop at Marsh Market on Baltimore's waterfront. Here in the dingy, rundown neighborhood of abandoned buildings and flophouses the artists could find large studios and cheap rent. Sam Scott's studio was huge, 80 by 80 feet, without heat, and in order to stay warm in the winter the artists would burn fish crates in a potbellied stove.