Judith Scott (May 1, 1943 – March 15, 2005) was an American fiber sculptor. She was deaf and had Down Syndrome. She was internationally renowned for her art. In 1987, Judith was enrolled at the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, California, which supports people with developmental disabilities. There, Judith discovered her passion and talent for abstract fiber art, and she was able to communicate in a new form. Unlike Joyce, Judith was born with Down Syndrome. During her infancy, Judith had scarlet fever, which caused her to lose her hearing. As this remained unknown until much later on in her life, Judith was never taught to sign, lipread or speak as a child.

Judith Scott spent her first seven and a half years at home with her parents, twin sister and older brothers. Although the developmental gap between the two girls was apparent, "the parents consciously sought to treat these youngest members of the family alike."

However, when it was time for the girls to start attending school, Judith was found to be "ineducable." There was only one classroom for children with disabilities, and Judith was not able to pass the verbally-based entrance tests, due to her still undiagnosed deafness. Consequently, on medical advice, her parents placed Judith in the Columbus State Institution (formerly the Columbus State School), an institution for mentally disabled people, on October 18, 1950. This separation had a profound effect on both twins. She was unexceptional with paint. She scribbled loops and circles, but her work contained no representational imagery, and she was so uninterested in creating that the staff was considering ending her involvement with the program.

It wasn't until Judith casually observed a fiber art class conducted by visiting artist Sylvia Seventy, that she had her artistic breakthrough. She made her first sculpture around 1988. Using the materials at hand, Judith spontaneously invented her own unique and radically different form of artistic expression. While other students were stitching, she was sculpting with an unprecedented zeal and concentration.

Her creative gifts and absolute focus were quickly recognized, and she was given complete freedom to choose her own materials. Taking whatever objects she found, regardless of ownership, she would wrap them in carefully selected colored yarns to create diverse sculptures of many different shapes. Some resemble cocoons or body parts, while others are elongated totemic poles. She has also been the subject of major shows in Switzerland and Japan.

Her work was included in the 2024 exhibition Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA).

Collections

Scott's work has become immensely popular in the world of outsider art, and her pieces sell for substantial sums. Scott is now hailed as a contemporary artist, no longer just an outsider. Her art is held in the permanent collections of many museums, including: Museum of Modern Art (Manhattan, New York), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art (Chicago, Illinois), Museum of Modern Art, and L'Aracine Musee D'Art Brut (Paris, France),

Filmography

{| class="wikitable sortable"

!Year

!Title

!Type

!Length

!Notes

|-

|2006

|Outsider: The Life and Art of Judith Scott.

|Documentary

|30 minutes

|Made by San Francisco filmmaker Betsy Bayha.

|-

|2006

|¿Qué tienes debajo del sombrero? (What's under your hat?)

|Documentary

|75 minutes

|Made by Lola Barrera and Iñaki Peñafiel.

|-

|2006

|Les Cocons Magiques de Judith Scott

|Documentary

|36 minutes

|Made by Philippe Lespinasse, filmed a few weeks before Scott's death

|-

|2009

|Make

|Documentary

|69 minutes

|Scott Ogden and Malcolm Hearn produced film examines the lives and art-making techniques of Hawkins Bolden, Judith Scott, Prophet Royal Robertson, and Ike Morgan.

|}

Exhibitions

Below is a list of select notable exhibitions for Judith Scott.

Solo exhibitions

  • 2018 – Judith Scott: Touchdown, Creative Growth Art Center, Oakland, California
  • 2014-15 – Bound and Unbound, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York
  • 2009 – Judith Scott: Retrospective, Ricco Maresca Gallery, New York City, New York
  • 2002 – Cocoon: Judith Scott, Ricco-Maresca Gallery, New York City, New York
  • 2026 – Remembering Judith Scott, The Luckiest Light Art Gallery & Studio, Havre de Grace, Maryland

Group exhibitions

  • 2019 – Memory Palaces: Inside the Collection of Audrey B. Heckler, American Folk Art Museum, New York City, New York
  • 2019 – The Doors of Perception, Curated by Javier Téllez in collaboration with the Outsider Art Fair, Frieze Art Fair, New York City, New York
  • 2019 – Flying High: Women Artists of Art Brut, Bank Austria Kunstforum, Vienna
  • 2018 – Outliers and American Vanguard Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
  • 2017 – Forget Me Not: Judith Scott, Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw, Georgia
  • 2017 – Viva Arte Viva, the 57th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
  • 2015 – Collection ABCD, La Maison Rouge, Paris, France
  • 2013 – Create, Creative Growth Art Center, Oakland, California
  • 2013 – Create, Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, Florida
  • 2013 – Extreme Art, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut
  • 2012 – Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York City, New York
  • 2011 – World Transformers, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
  • 2000 – Visions, American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland
  • 2005 – Creative Growth, The Ricky Jay Broadside Collection, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, California

References

Further reading

  • Mullin, Rick, , American Arts Quarterly, Fall 2010
  • Joyce Wallace Scott, "Entwined:Sisters and Secrets in the Silent World of Artist Judith Scott", Beacon Press
  • "Judith Scott - Bound and Unbound" Brooklyn Museum, 2015
  • Judith Scott profile, Creative Growth Art Center
  • Clip from 'Outsider : The Life and Art of Judith Scott' a film by Betsy Bayha