Autonom@uz

The Healers – Mary Eastey, Sarah Cloyce, and Martha Corey

Mary Eastey, gentle and methodical, carried a bundle of dried herbs tied with blue thread — mugwort, feverfew, wild carrot. Her sister Sarah Cloyce learned from her: boiling, binding, whispering prayers while the steam rose.

Martha Corey, sharper of tongue and mind, recorded the ailments of her neighbors in a tiny ledger. To the Puritan eye, these were women trespassing in the domain of divine providence.

The historian reads between depositions and inventories — ointments, tinctures, linens — and sees an early form of community medicine. Their “witchcraft” was empiricism: trial, error, observation. Each poultice was data, each birth or fever another page in a silent, collective notebook.

The village called it sorcery; the record calls it science by a woman’s hand.

The term Art Brut — literally “raw art” — was coined by French painter Jean Dubuffet in the 1940s. He wanted to separate spontaneous, untutored creation from the refined and self-conscious world of galleries and academies. For Dubuffet, true vitality came from outsiders: the mentally ill, prisoners, children, or self-taught makers who created without chasing art world approval.