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Professor John Scott Examining an Art Piece at ÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥. This art piece was for the chapel.

Xavier has been part of Ayo Scott’s ‘03 life from the start. And as the son of the late John T. Scott, ‘62, his legacy is enriched throughout the campus and city.

His memories within Xavier run deep; most of the fond ones are alongside his father.

“I was baptized in the [old] chapel as a baby. Some of my earliest memories of talking about Xavier are of my baptism or of my first job at Xavier, while my dad was setting up the foundry in the back of the art department. I was making screws for sculptures of his, which was probably just something that he did to keep me busy,” Ayo remembered fondly. “I've even found sketchbooks from my dad when he was a student in which he was doodling my mom's name, and dotting the I's with little hearts and stuff like that. My dad was [essentially] my mom's peer dean at Xavier, so they met as students.”

John’s decision to study art at a time when most Black college students were taught that art and making a living were not synonymous demonstrated his defiance, especially given his athletic ability and the paths those physical talents could have taken him. It’s proof that, as Ayo would explain, art was a way of life for John.

“He was offered a basketball scholarship to play basketball at Xavier and rejected that so that he could focus on his artwork, which I think speaks to his defiance, and he loved basketball. He absolutely loved to play ball, and I'm kind of surprised that he would have passed up an opportunity to have his education paid for by that,” Ayo said. “But he stayed focused on his schoolwork, so much so that when he finished from Xavier, he went to Michigan State for graduate school, where he focused on printmaking and sculpture and furthered, and eventually went on to teach at Xavier and continued making art for a living, as we know.”

Ayo says that art was spiritual for his father. Before meeting Ayo’s mother, Anna ‘64, John was seriously considering entering the priesthood or joining a monastery. He was a very devout Catholic. While he did not talk to Ayo about his religion, Ayo saw his spirituality in the way that he approached his work.

“His motto, his mantra was ‘Pass it on.’ That's something he got in the art department of Xavier, but passing it on was really about sharing any blessings that you were given,” he recalled. “The idea is to pay it forward.”

Ayo says his father's humanity and work are the cornerstone of Xavier. His work is seen throughout the Administration Building. There are sculptures. And there are scriptures engraved in his work. Ayo says his father’s work was made to lead more people to God.

“My dad’s work at Xavier is featured very prominently and also completely under the radar simultaneously. Dad taught there for 40 years, and it’s been [well] over a decade since his death. He hasn't been on campus for quite a while. And if you think about the fact that most students are there for 4 or 5, probably not too much more than 6 years, there are a lot of people who have no idea on campus who my father is,” he said. “They might have walked past his work in the UC. They might have walked past his sculpture outside the NCF. They might have even gone into the Art Village and seen his name on the outside and not asked, ‘Well, who the hell is John Scott?’ But his footprint and fingerprint are all over campus.”

Regardless, Ayo says the legacy is strong.

“Dad's legacy also includes me as an extension of him. We have so much work from him that the world has not seen yet, or his story hasn't fully been told yet, that a big part of what I do is about making sure that people do acknowledge the genius and the brilliance of who my dad was,” he said.

One of the biggest things he wants people to know about his father is that his dad did not believe in art for art's sake.

“He believed that art was about and for the people, and that art should be accessible to the people. A great deal of Dad’s work was public-facing, or if it wasn't public-facing, it was definitely publicly influenced,” he said. “Everything from Apartheid in South Africa, and showing how much our country, and how our country treats African American people, people of color here, and the similarities to the things that were done to Black people in other parts of the world. He would often make work that pushed conversations about those topics, and in ways that could be uncomfortable for a lot of people, but if nothing else, informative for a lot of people who might not otherwise be thinking of those things or talking about those things.”

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