negotiations, Joyce Scott became her sister's legal guardian, and brought Judith to live with her in California, a state where all mentally disabled citizens are entitled to an ongoing education. Judith Scott died of natural causes at her sister's home in Dutch Flat, California, a few weeks short of her 62nd birthday. She outlived her life expectancy at birth by almost fifty years. Art On April 1, 1987, Judith Scott began attending the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, one of the first organizations in the world to provide studio space for artists with disabilities. For almost two years, Judith showed little interest in any artistic activity. 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. 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. Many of her works also feature pairs, reflecting Scott's experience as a twin. Judith worked on her art five days a week for eighteen years, producing over 200 pieces in total. Judith had her first exhibition in 1999, which coincided with the publication of John MacGregor's book Metamorphosis: The Fiber Art of Judith Scott. Together, these events helped propel her to worldwide recognition. 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), the American Visionary Art Museum (Baltimore, Maryland), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museum of American Folk Art (Manhattan, New York), Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art (Chicago, Illinois), Irish