150969651Judith Scott19432005Judith Scott’s woven sculptural works range in size and shape: some are several feet long, lie nearly flat, and rise only a few inches off of the ground. Others seem to hold a center of gravity from which they unfurl in all directions. And still others amass vertically as if supported by an inner tension. The surfaces of every work are covered in many strands of yarn and strips of fabric that weave and interface. Networks of knots secure the fibers in some places. Colors, though often bright, shift subtly at times, creating ripples and waves across the surface planes. Something, or perhaps many things, are inside of each sculpture and lend shape to the overall construction. Often this scaffolding is hidden beneath the layers of yarn, but sometimes an inner element is exposed by the fiber surround and integrated into the sculpture’s outermost layer. Scott’s documented artmaking began when she was forty-three years old. On April 1, 1987, she began working at Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, California. At that time, Creative Growth was already well into its second decade functioning as a studio workshop and exhibition space supporting the work of disabled adults. Scott had Down Syndrome and was deaf from birth, and at the age of seven, she was separated from her family and institutionalized at two different facilities in Ohio. She moved to California and began working at Creative Growth only after her twin sister, Joyce, became her legal guardian. Scott spent five days a week at the studio, working at the same table at which she also chose to eat lunch. She focused on one work at a time, day after day, before indicating with body language that she had reached the end of her process with a given sculpture. Brooke Wyatt, 2024 Text written as part of “Rethinking Biography,” an initiative supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). JudithScotthttps://collection.folkartmuseum.org/internal/media/dispatcher/4176/fullJudith Scott—born deaf and with Down syndrome—joined the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, California, in 1986, one year after her twin sister, Joyce, became her custodial guardian. There, she spontaneously engaged in creative work for the last eighteen years of her life, following her own impulses and preferences in terms of media. Her sculptures bring to mind giant cocoons or mummies. Although they are probably figurative, none were titled. Once finished, Scott would leave the objects on her worktable, without any attempt to display them. The understructures are composed of discarded or found items, such as electric fans, foam packaging, tubes of various sorts, and yarn cones. She would disguise the core with lengths of knotted cloth or yarn (her long-standing material) using a wide range of binding techniques— wrapping, knotting, tying, lacing, stitching, knitting, and crocheting—until it developed into an anthropomorphic bundle. Secretive like sarcophagi and somehow silent with their sound-absorbing texture, Scott’s sculptures offer a subtle experience of intimacy, placing us at the crossing point of dual states—the visible and the invisible, the origin and the end, and birth and death. Valérie Rousseau, exhibition label for Six Decades Collecting Self-Taught Art: Revealing a Diverse and Rich Artistic Narrative. New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2019.(1943–2005)ColumbusOaklandColumbusOaklandColumbusOaklandJudith Scott