Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Judith Scott

Judith Scott (1943-2005), a fraternal twin, suffered from Down Syndrome. She was also deaf, a condition that was misdiagnosed as mental retardation until she was an adult.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.For the next eighteen years of her life, Scott created sculptures using yarn, twine, and strips of fabric, to wrap and knot around an array of mundane objects she discovered around her.Using the materials at hand, Judith spontaneously invented her own unique and radically different form of artistic expression, sculpting with an unprecedented zeal and concentration.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.Scott’s vivid and enigmatic sculptures, which evolved in shape and material throughout her career, expressed her imagination in ways she could not through speech.More of Judith Scott’s remarkable work can be found at https://www.wikiart.org/en/judith-scott.