Ruth Horsting (1919–2000) was a sculptor, educator and member of the pioneering generation of artists who shaped the University of California, Davis, art department. Born in Chicago, she earned a B.A. in English literature from Northwestern University in 1940, studied painting and sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1946 to 1950, and returned to Northwestern to earn an M.F.A. in art studio in 1959. That year Horsting moved to California with her three children and joined the UC Davis faculty. Initially appointed in Home Economics, she moved into the developing art program, where she taught sculpture until 1971. Working primarily in bronze and steel, Horsting created expressive figurative sculptures that combined an interest in the human body with the formal language of postwar abstraction. Horsting’s life changed dramatically in the early 1970s. Following a sabbatical and the death of her eldest son, William, in 1971, she left UC Davis and largely withdrew from her professional art career. She became a student of yoga master Baba Hari Dass, whom she helped bring to the United States, and became known as Ma Renu. She later helped establish the Mount Madonna Center in the Santa Cruz Mountains and founded the Sri Ram Foundation, supporting a home, school and medical facility for children in India. Horsting died in Bonny Doon, California, in 2000 at age 81. Art also became a family legacy. Horsting’s daughter, Archana Horsting, grew up in Davis surrounded by her mother’s art and later became an artist and printmaker. After studying at the influential Atelier 17 printmaking workshop, Archana co-founded Berkeley’s Kala Art Institute in 1974, helping establish an important center for printmaking and contemporary art in the Bay Area. She has recalled her mother as an extraordinary artist whose contribution has been somewhat overlooked in accounts of the region’s art history.