¿Qué tienes debajo del sombrero?(2006), by Lola

Barrera and Iñaki Peñafiel

While engaging the process of artistic creation at the Creative Growth Art Center (CGAC) in Oakland, California, Judith Scott produced numerous enigmatic three-dimensional fiber and mixed-media sculpture pieces that subsequently received international attention. Approaching Scott's life and art from the perspective of Disability Studies—once again understood as an expressly political project—takes us beyond the limitations of the label of Art Brut/ Outsider Art and of questions of artistic communication to properly situate her activities at the CGAC as work in both a social and economic sense. Scott's story—and her representation in a Spanish documentary film by directors Lola Barrera and Iñaki Peñafiel—suggests that in aspiring to achieve greater social and economic inclusion for such marginalized populations we must challenge the pervasive clinical paradigm that frames disability as lack and go further by cultivating sustainable, meaningful work experiences, such as that offered by the CGAC to people with developmental disabilities. Ultimately, creating art has the potential to be such a form of meaningful work. The first part of this chapter looks at the life, work, and filmic representation of American fiber artist Judith Scott (1943–2005) within the context of Disability Studies in order to accomplish a series of three nested goals.