This article was featured in Sun City Palm Desert's News & Views, November 2010:

                     
                                           A TOUCH OF KLASS
                                            by Sunny Kreis Collins

We've all heard the maxim 'one must suffer for one's art.'  A lovely Iowa native, by the name of Betty Klass Druskoff, has surely done that.  This, however, is not intended to be a sad story, but one of inspiration.

When Betty was twenty-one, the older of her two brothers was in a swimming accident, which left him permanently paralyzed from the neck down.  A year later, her mother took her own life.  "For a good 10 years I  just felt numb," Betty comments.  "I got married, had a child...but felt I was just existing.  Somehow I got through each and every day."  Betty's marriage was to end in divorce, but this served to initiate a partial wake-up call and the fog of sadness in her life began to lift.

"I first contemplated my interest in psychology but my heart said art," and in her mid-40's Betty went back to college, receiving a B.A. in Fine Art from Briar Cliff University in Sioux City.  One piece, created in the studio while Betty was in college, hangs on her wall today -- an interesting black and tan creation combining corrugated cardboard, brown wrapping paper and masonite entitled, "Letting Go."

She thereupon moved to San Diego and ended up working at Macy's in the fur department as the assistant manager.  "I flew by the seat of my pants for a while until I learned about furs," Betty laughs.  Modern art is Betty's forte and on the side she continued to do wall pieces.  Her day-to-day working life eventually led her to a position with Healthnet Insurance, but was the happiest when she was creating.  "I discovered how art could be healing and therapeutic.  It enabled me to respond to life and to live again.  My story is very much about survival, and I hope my art reveals a celebration of life."

Betty taught art off and on over the years in her home.  Here in the desert, with her friend Lauretta Lowell, she began teaching classes in her Sun City air-conditioned garage studio.

Since moving to the desert in 2003 with her late husband, she has participated in the Art Under the Umbrella's Show in Old Town La Quinta and exhibited in furniture  stores and gift boutiques.  Betty also works with interior designers and creates pieces on commission.  Her work has appeared in the gift shop of the Palm Springs Museum and in galleries in La Quinta and Palm Desert.

Recently, Betty's canvas became the gourd.  She gathers these from Welburn Gourd Farm in Fallbrook, CA and uses specialty papers, bark, driftwood and other miscellaneous found objects.  "Obviously, I'm not your typical gourd artist," she declares, "but I'm strongly influenced by ethnic designs, while adding a contemporary twist."  Several pieces in her living room are testimony that these materials and inclinations result in beautiful creations.  "Gourd art is gaining in popularity," she attests, "and becoming recognized as fine art."

Healing through art, which has constituted a life support for Betty, is something this happy, joyous lady discovered years ago and now wishes to share.