Growing up she was always really, really girly. When she was a little kid and they'd go skiing, she'd have on a dress tucked into her ski pants.
 Her mom is Nadine Bernard Westcott, and she's pretty well known for doing children's books. She's done like hundreds. So Becky always had that growing up; she was around a really strong woman making art all the time.
 Becky was very very aware of the concept of being a female artist. She thought about it and it informed her work. Whatever she wanted to communicate to the world through her paintings, she wanted to make sure it came from a female voice.

 She was beautiful, and she was shy, and she didn't think that she was beautiful. And that's a lethal combination for girls because it's all "That girl thinks she's so great" and she wasn't like that at all.
 She knew what it was like to go into a room and hold your arms in a corner because everyone else knew everyone else. She had always wished she had that close group of friends... and so once she finally had it, she was super in tune with the person in the room that felt that way, and was super inclusive for them.

 [In order to paint a portrait,] she would shoot a mob of photos of a person head to toe. She'd shoot a bunch from far away, and string it out until they'd calm down so she could get in close.
 Brian Lynch:  Sometimes if I can't get to sleep, I'll think 'Remember how you felt when Becky was taking pictures of you?' and I'll go out like that.
 It was one of her gifts. The photos in a lot of ways are as rad as the rest of her work.

 Her work had nothing to do with skateboarding, other than that was the crowd she ran in -- her community -- and the Do It Yourself aspect. That thing that skateboarders share, of like using shit for something other than it's supposed to be used for, or I'm gonna use this thing because it's free.. she had that.
 She just liked really old shit. That was her interest in sign-painting -- not so much letter forms, 'cause she really didn't care about that stuff -- she cared more about the oldness of the sign.
 The stuff that I do appeals to people my age; the stuff she did is timeless. Other than the clothes that people are wearing, you can't put a year on those paintings.

 I remember once we had a baby bird fly in the chimney and fall into the basement, and every ten minutes we'd here this "Pip!" and she would go down and try to find it. She picked it up in paper towels and put it in this shopping basket, and I was like "That's the rotten one that's not supposed to live. They don't get taken care of, they sink or swim" and she was like "No, no, it'll be OK. It probably just fell out of the nest." So she put the basket on the roof outside the studio, and every 20 minutes I'd hear the window go up. I was like "Leave it alone!"... I knew it was just gonna be out there dead. And a little while later she was like "Come here! Check it out!" and the mama bird was sitting on the edge of the basket. I was like "That bird's gonna eat him! It's some weird bird thing we've never seen before!"
 And then the next time we checked, they were both gone.

RELATED LINKS:
Mary Chen Remembers Becky
Pew Fellowship