About Betsy Porter

The "Art Bio" below was written for a small exhibition of my scarves and jewelry in November 1999, and has intentionally not been updated.

Betsy Porter likes to make art, especially art that people can wear. She takes personal adornment seriously as an art form, and believes that “the human body is just as worthy of decoration as a wall, maybe more so.”

Betsy was born into a design-conscious family, a family whose members have always enjoyed making things and going to museums. Her maternal grandmother was an architect, in the days when few women dared pursue such a career. In conservative Baltimore, Betsy’s mother organized the first home tour focusing on modern design, and helped establish a rental gallery for contemporary art. Betsy’s father often took her to Baltimore’s beautiful Walters Art Museum, full of exquisite ancient, medieval, and Renaissance objects. She married into a family of artists. Her late father in law, Fairfield Porter, was a well-known painter.

Betsy’s wearable creations reflect her deep commitment to design that complements the human body and complexion. Her necklaces and earrings are designed to hang and move gracefully. She often hand-knots her beads, because “it causes the beads to move in interesting ways.” The color combinations are intended to complement, not overshadow, the woman who wears them.

The scarves in this display are 100 percent silk crinkle chiffon, a lightweight airy fabric that drapes and knots wonderfully. They are dyed by folding and clamping the scarf (a variation on the Japanese art of shibori), and then applying fiber- reactive dyes. “Silk is especially delightful,” she says. “Soft, subtle color shadings are possible.” An artist working in this technique must learn to work creatively without complete control of color effects, which will vary slightly throughout the piece. The scarves can be either hand-washed and lined-dried, or dry cleaned, without risk of the color running.

Betsy loves to learn new art forms, and has picked up quite a number with the help of family and friends and night schools and craft guilds, and by attending adult art/craft schools such as Penland in western North Carolina and Peters Valley in northern New Jersey. She enjoys other fiber arts such as weaving, quilting, Japanese braiding (kumihimo), painting with dyes on stretched silk, and marbling on fabric. She has taught workshops and classes in New Jersey, where she lived until 1997, and recently offered a small bead class in San Francisco. Her work has appeared at art fairs, galleries, and gift shops in St. Louis, Baltimore, and New Jersey; but this exhibit is her first on the West Coast. Her latest enthusiasm is painting religious icons in a highly traditional Russian style, using gold leaf and egg tempera

Expanding on her silk-painting techniques, Betsy designed and made large liturgical pieces including altar covers, banners, and vestments for use in two East Coast churches. She recently painted portions of a large, elaborate applique banner for St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco.

Betsy moved to San Francisco 2 years ago to pursue her career in architecture. She holds a Master of Architecture degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and is a member of the American Institute of Architects. In her “day job” at Topflight Specs, she specializes in writing architectural specifications.