Judith Scott’s work is celebrated for its astonishing visual complexity. In a career spanning just seventeen years, Scott developed a unique and idiosyncratic method to produce a body of work of remarkable originality. Often working for weeks or months on individual pieces, she used yarn, thread, fabric, and other fibers to envelop found objects into fastidiously woven, wrapped, and bundled structures.

Born in Columbus, Ohio, with Down syndrome, Scott (1943–2005) was also largely deaf and did not speak. After thirty-five years living within an institutional setting for people with disabilities, she was introduced in 1987 to Creative Growth Art Center—a visionary studio art program founded more than forty years ago in Oakland, California, to foster and serve a community of artists with developmental and physical disabilities.