Portrait of Myth Gallery Founders and Artists Betsy Youngquist & R. Scott Long. Couple sitting on dark background.

THE CREATIVE VISION

Through the creative life they share, artist owners Betsy Youngquist & R. Scott Long work to explore tales of human truths, while overlapping dimensional realities along a conscious continuum. Within these creative journeys, the illusive line between logic and the mystic is a constant curiosity.

Duality, mischief, transfiguration, enchantment, and amusement are the narrative themes the artists masterfully toy with in capturing those elusive qualities of the human experience. Their work is Inspired greatly by the unknown, the surreal, the mythical, and folklore.

BETSY YOUNGQUIST

Betsy Youngquist is an American mixed-media sculptor known for intricately beaded hybrid creatures, psychologically charged narrative works, and immersive installations that explore the interconnectedness of humans, animals, nature, and myth. Drawing from early experiences with biology, Indigenous beadwork traditions, dreams, ecological concerns, and the natural world, Youngquist creates sculptural works that merge beauty, mystery, humor, empathy, and unease.

Using materials such as antique doll parts, excavated German doll eyes, beads, crystals, found objects, and fragments of historical adornment, Youngquist transforms discarded and emotionally resonant materials into richly textured contemporary relics. Her work explores themes of transformation, stewardship, intuition, and the thin boundary between the sacred and the strange.

Youngquist collaborates with Scott on many of her sculptural and installation-based works. Together they have created immersive environments exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States.

Her work has appeared in exhibitions at the American Visionary Art Museum, Racine Art Museum, Illinois State Museum, VIDA Museum, Museum of Beadwork, and the International Exhibition Centre in Kiev, Ukraine, among others. Her work is held in private collections throughout the United States, including collectors of major large-scale sculptural works.

Youngquist has been featured in publications including American Craft, Colossal, Where Women Create, Art Doll Quarterly, and numerous books and international publications focused on contemporary sculpture, beadwork, and assemblage.

“Life on Earth,” American Craft Magazine, 2019 Betsy Youngquist Studio'da heykelle çevrili. Boncuklu kuş heykeli yapılırken boncuk işi anlatıldı.

R. SCOTT LONG

Born in Rockford, Illinois, to a homemaker and a Hostess Cupcake delivery driver and print sales rep, Scott was just eight years old when he carved a little sparrow from wood, learning the craft from his Dad- himself a self taught carver. After this initial success, young Scott wanted to carve a chickadee, and built a trap to capture one for use as a live model. The little bird was so stressed from capture that Scott had to set it free. At the age of twelve, Scott tried carving his own likeness in wood, and recalls thinking that it really wasn’t him carving at all, but “as if someone else was doing the carving through him.”

One night, when Scott was thirty, and living in Milwaukee, he was using a meditation technique his mother had taught him as a child to better fall asleep. As he began the meditation, he felt a sudden “circular wave of energy” loop through his body. He recalls immediately standing up, walking out of the room, and down the hallway- experiencing a new phenomenon known as astral projection. The occurrence had a powerful effect on Scott, and still influences the subjects he now explores in his work.

One of the driving mysteries behind Scott’s work is “what are humankind’s unknown capacities and potential, and from where have we come?” Scott still carves little birds as gifts for his beloved partner of twenty years, Betsy, and helps her with construction of the sculptural armatures she envisions as the base for her giant beaded works of art.

BETSY YOUNGQUIST

Artist Statement

At its core, my work is rooted in storytelling. Through hybrid forms, immersive installations, and intricately beaded surfaces, I create entities and environments that explore the interconnected relationship between humans, animals, consciousness, memory, and the living systems of the natural world. Human eyes frequently appear within animal forms, reflecting my belief that the separation between ourselves and the natural world is far less fixed than we imagine.

I am interested in the tension between wonder and unease, beauty and discomfort, creating beings that feel emotionally recognizable yet not entirely of our world. Influenced by mythology, ecology, dreams, animal symbolism, and early encounters with Indigenous beadwork and cultural traditions, I create immersive worlds that preserve spaces of mystery, imagination, and symbolic thinking often lost in adulthood.

My process combines intuitive creation with research, travel, and personal quests connected to specific environments, histories, and symbolic systems. I am drawn to materials that carry traces of prior lives and emotional histories—antique doll eyes excavated from German factories, fragments of deteriorating beaded purses, worn stuffed animals, crystals, and discarded objects once touched, treasured, or forgotten. These materials become collaborators within the work, carrying memory, intimacy, and accumulated experience into newly transformed forms.

In collaboration with sculptor R Scott Long, I develop installations that invite viewers into spaces of emotional recognition, wonder, and interconnectedness, dissolving perceived boundaries between self, environment, and other living beings.

BETSY YOUNGQUIST
CV

Education

M.A., Art Education with Museum Emphasis, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1992
B.A., Magna Cum Laude, North Park University, 1987

Professional Experience

Artist, 1998–present
Workshop Instructor (Beaded Sculpture), 2017–2025
Co-Owner, Gallery Two and Myth Gallery, New Orleans, 2016–2023

Selected Publications

“Conversations with Betsy Youngquist,” Museum of Beadwork, 2021
“Life on Earth,” American Craft Magazine, 2019
“Surreal Assemblages by Betsy Youngquist,” Colossal, 2018
“Meet Betsy Youngquist,” Voyage Chicago, 2018
“Trail of Betsy’s Beads,” Our City, Our Story, Pablo Korona, 2018
“Art in the Unknown,” Where Women Create Magazine, 2018
HEY !: 4 Degrees Art, Ankama Editions, 2016
See Yourself X: Human Futures Expanded, Black Dog Publishing, 2016
“DOLL collector: a manifesto,” Tatyana Sazonova, 2014
“Planet Youngquist: Land of the Fantastical,” Art Doll Quarterly, 2014
“Inside Betsy Youngquist’s Beautiful Beaded World,” Digital Beadwork Magazine, 2014
“Creative Rituals: Betsy Youngquist,” Where Women Create Magazine, 2014
Suzanne Golden Presents: Interviews with 36 Artists Who Innovate with Beads, 2013
Featured Artist, Super Beadwork Magazine, 2011
Bead International 2008, Ohio University Press (Cover), 2008
American Style Magazine (Cover), 2005
“Dreaming Beaded Creatures,” Bead and Button Magazine, 2003
The Best in Contemporary Beadwork, Interweave Press, 2002
Illinois Women Artists: The New Millennium, National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1999

Selected Museum & Institutional Exhibitions

Guest Artist, Museum of Beadwork, 2025–2026
Analog: Rockford’s Decade of Creative Rebellion, Rockford Art Museum, 2025
Fantastical World, Patina Gallery, 2025
Repurposed, Kentuck Art Center, 2024
Craft Invitational 2024, Dubuque Museum of Art, 2024
What is a Bead?, Museum of Beadwork, 2023
The Mystery of Secrets, American Visionary Art Museum, 2017–2018
Toy Box—Inspiration Through Play, Illinois State Museum, 2017–2018
Strung Together—Beads, People, and History, Museum of Natural and Cultural History, University of Oregon, 2016–2017
Surreal…So Real, Tory Folliard Gallery, 2016
Shaping Lives: The Transformative Art of the Figure, Reece Museum, East Tennessee State University, 2016
Mosaic Arts International, Women’s Museum of California, 2016
The People’s Show, Illinois State Museum, 2015
International Exhibition “Fashion Doll,” International Exhibition Center, 2012–2015
SOFA, Next Step Gallery, Chicago, 2009, 2010, 2015
Curiosities and Things of Wonder, Carthage College, 2014
Exquisite Menagerie, Rockford University, 2013
Mosaic Arts International, Museum of Glass, 2013
The Teapot Redefined, Mobilia Gallery, 2012
Animal Nature, Racine Art Museum, 2012
ArtPrize, Grand Rapids Public Museum, 2011
Eccentric Insects: The Hine’s Emerald Dragonfly Project, Racine Art Museum, 2010
Rockford Artists at VIDA, VIDA Museum, 2009
Crossing Threads, Crossing Boundaries, Northern Illinois University Art Museum, 2009
Light of the Moon (Solo Exhibition), Rockford Art Museum, 2008
Bead International, Dairy Barn Arts Center, 2008
Enchantment, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, 2006
Solo Exhibition, Rock Valley College, 2002
Two Person Show, North Park University, 1999
Illinois Women Artists: The New Millennium, National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1999
Passionate Obsessions, Phipps Center for the Arts, 1998

Selected Awards & Honors

Illinois Arts Council Fellowship Finalist, 2024
Distinguished Artist of the Year, Rockford Area Arts Council, 2023
Fine Art Hall of Fame, Rockford Public School District, 2019
New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival — Best of Show (2003, 2015), Artist Award (2008), Juror (2009, 2022)
Plaza Art Fair — Invitational Award, Gold Award, Shared Best of Show, 2006–2016
Lakefront Festival of Arts — Artist Awards and Artist Adviser, 2005–2015
St. Louis Art Fair — Multiple First Place awards and Best of Show, 2005–2014
Sausalito Art Festival — First Place, 2012
Mosaic Arts International — Juror’s Award, 2014
American Craft Council — Award of Excellence, 2007