Betty Woolfolk

“Half the fun of creating art using recycled materials is the hunting and gathering period,” said Betty Woolfolk. When she was a child, she would go with her father to his manufacturing plant and pick up small pieces of metal that were left on the ground from the large fabrication machines. She was on a treasure hunt, and that tradition continued all her life. She passed away too soon at the age of 69 in 2016, but she left a wonderful legacy.

Her hunting grounds expanded to flea markets and garage sales where ‘cultural cast-offs’ could be reborn into mixed media sculpture that commented on all phases of modern life. How science and technology affected our daily lives was a consistent theme in her work as she continually celebrated the juxtaposition of man and nature. On the outside, her art pieces appeared to be light-hearted, but there was always a deeper message within. She non-judgmentally pointed out inconsistencies in the viewer's thinking, such as the Running Fence being constructed out of a synthetic man-made fabric and then installed in a natural setting.

A mixed media artist and master of assemblage art, Woolfolk was Executive Director of Gallery Route One in Point Reyes, California. She earned her Masters of Fine Arts degree from the prestigious Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and her work was exhibited at venues in Northern Ireland, San Rafael, Eureka and Bolinas, California, in addition to her own gallery. Her focus on the use of recycled materials into something unique and creative made her a perfect fit as an artist for RunningFence-recycled.