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Aldwyth in 2010 with her monumental collage “Casablanca.”
Credit...
Jerry Siegel
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The World According to Aldwyth
In paint, bricolage and collage, she explored the history of art, ideas and the human species.
Aldwyth in 2010 with her monumental collage “Casablanca.”
Credit...
Jerry Siegel
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By
Penelope Green
April 24, 2026
Aldwyth, who died on April 10 at 90, was known for her ravishing collages and intricate assemblages, but her first artworks were paintings that she showed at the Red Piano Art Gallery on Hilton Head Island, in South Carolina.
With typical rigor, she hewed to strict rules. A series of paintings of watermelons set on a horizontal line explored limitless color and pattern combinations. A series of egg paintings on square canvases investigated the possibilities of what might be done within a square.
But canvas, frames and paint are expensive, and Aldwyth needed to economize. In 1989, when Hurricane Hugo ravaged Charleston, she brought water and supplies to artist friends there, and began photographing the wreckage and collecting the debris. With those materials, she started to experiment with assemblages, creating containers and contraptions that were likened to
Joseph Cornell
’s boxes but that also owed a debt to the work of outsider artists, whose rough, handmade ethos and mysterious narratives she admired.
Always, her themes were historical and revisionist: She queried the history of art, of ideas, of the human species. She wanted to develop her own taxonomies.
Image
“The World According to Zell” (1997-2001).
Credit...
via Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art
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