Artist Judith Scott (1943–2005) is included in "Greater Than the Sum: Practices of Gathering, Reuse, and Assemblage" runs from October 24, 2026, to February 7, 2027, at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
The artists included in the group exhibition each utilize practices of gathering, reuse, and assemblage. Through sculpture, fiber, found objects, and collected materials, they demonstrate how a component’s value is not found solely in its advertised or initial use, but in its ability to connect in countless ways with other beings, ideas, and objects to create complex, stronger, and richer collectives and meanings.
Working with materials carrying rich and often unknowable histories, the artists create physical manifestations of the relationships between material, cultural, and environmental experiences and histories. Their works reveal practices rooted in observation, collection, collaboration, and transformation.
The exhibition includes environmentally focused assemblages by Carolina Caycedo; spiritually charged sculptures by Arthur Simms; wrapped fiber works by Judith Scott; Kea Tawana’s custom-built trunks and systems of organization; and Lenore Tawney’s gathered materials, collaged boxes, and assemblages drawn from her studio practice. Together, the artists offer a range of models for connection, steeped in community and environmental contexts.
Through their artworks and artistic practices, the artists demonstrate the transformative and empowering nature of coming together, of beings and things, with our various stories, experiences, skills, and strengths. In this vein, artistic practices of gathering and reuse demonstrate that an interconnected assemblage, community, or ecosystem embodies a vaster potential value—that is, Greater Than the Sum of its parts.
Exhibition Details
Exhibition Details:
"Greater Than the Sum: Practices of Gathering, Reuse, and Assemblage"
October 24, 2026 - February 7, 2027
August 5, 2026–July 11, 2027
John Michael Kohler Arts Center
608 New York Ave, Sheboygan, WI 53081
ABOUT The John Michael Kohler Arts Center
The John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC), located north of Milwaukee in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, is known for promoting the understanding and appreciation of the work of self-taught and contemporary artists through exhibitions and commissioned works of art.
Founded in 1967, JMKAC has preserved, studied, and exhibited artist-built environments, earning a worldwide reputation. Art environments involve an individual significantly transforming their surroundings into an exceptional, multifaceted work of art.
The Arts Center’s downtown Sheboygan facility includes eight galleries, two performance spaces, a café, a museum shop, and a drop-in art-making studio. Among its program offerings are community arts projects; artist residencies; presentations of dance, film, and music; a free weekly summer concert series; classes and workshops; an onsite arts-based preschool; and approximately twelve original exhibitions of the work of self-taught and contemporary artists annually. JMKAC also administers the renowned Arts/Industry residency program, which is hosted by Kohler Co.
ABOUT Judith Scott
Judith Scott was born in Ohio with her fraternal twin sister Joyce in 1943. Scott was institutionalized at the age of seven at the Columbus State School. She would remain in state institutions until 1985, when Joyce became her legal guardian and brought her to California. Scott entered the Creative Growth Studio in 1987, initially displaying little artistic interest until a visiting artist workshop with the sculptor Sylvia Seventy, during which Scott discovered the medium of fiber art. Her wrapped sculptures, abstract in shape, were sourced from handbuilt armatures from discarded or found materials, often concealing an inner structure or a cache of items. Her practice was marked by her independence, self-direction, and for never repeating a form or color scheme in her multi-media textile sculptures. Scott created nearly 100 sculptures during her tenure in the Creative Growth Studio, where she practiced until her death in 2005. Scott’s work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum in New York in a retrospective exhibition and is part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Smithsonian in Washington DC, among many others. She has also shown at Gugging, Austria; the Museum of Everything, London; the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; White Columns, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, Gavin Brown’s enterprise, Ricco Maresca, New York: and Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco.