betsy youngquist

norman, 2008, 10x6x7, humpty dumpty day, 2007, 6x9x5, baby bird on a stick, 2007, 11x17x7, petunia, 2008, 11x8x5, buzz, 2008, 8x9x6

i see betsy youngquist's freakishly funny (yet hopelessly loveable) creations at the philadelphia craft show every year and every year i agonize over the fact that i can't afford to buy one...one day i'll own one...one day...

As fourth graders at Welsh Elementary School in Rockford, IL my classmate Kristin Henard and I co-authored and illustrated a book entitled The Two Friends. Xeroxed and stapled, this book tells the story of an eagle and a horse who meet in the wild and become friends. Two of the book’s illustrations, both simple line drawings, picture the eagle, Bushy-Tail, riding on the back of the horse, Cherokee. It was a start. While a fledgling adult artist in 1998, the Illinois Committee for the National Museum of Women in the Arts selected a beaded painting of mine called Flight of the Zebra for an exhibition. With a red bird perched on a zebra the images of Bushy-Tail and Cherokee were back. Still great friends, they had morphed into an explosion of texture and color, and both now sported human feet. Anthropomorphism had taken root.