Molly B. Right specializes in oversized mosaic-like portraits made from vintage bottle caps. Right is a self-taught artist. She began by painting small paintings, often on pieces of scrap metal or lumber that she found. The subject matter ranged from vignettes of her childhood to minimalist figurative works. She made her leap from narrative paintings to bottle cap portraits in 2002.

“I was inspired by remembering my grandparent’s desk. The drawers were filled with things that might have been thrown away but were saved by people who were molded by depression-era frugality; old rubber bands, corks, bottle caps, balls of string, 2″ pencil nubs.”

Bolstered by a newfound source of inspiration, she began a series of paintings about things that people save and accumulate.

As the body of work reached its natural conclusion, Molly pondered what to do with a rust-stained piece of sheet metal a friend had given her; the patterns of rust on the metal brought to mind the Shroud of Turin. “I decided to use paint to enhance the vague suggestion of a face and painted a man’s face on the metal.” She formed a halo from bottle caps, and bottle cap Jesus was born.” Mary soon followed, and Molly knew that she had found her medium.

Molly worked in her Downtown Charleston studio for 20 years but has since moved into a studio on Folly Beach. Molly works almost entirely on commissioned pieces, which she creates in the Folly Beach studio and at her summer studio in West Chester, Pennsylvania.