Betsy Damon

Early life and career
Betsy Damon
Born1940 (Age 80)
EducationMFA Columbia University
Alma materBA Skidmore College
Known forSculpture, Performance, Installation, Eco-Art
Spouse(s)Christian Otto
Websitehttps://www.keepersofthewaters.org/

Born in 1940,[1] Betsy Damon is an American artist whose work has been influenced by her activism in women's, gay, and environmental rights. She received her masters degree from Columbia University in 1966. After receiving her degree, she traveled to Germany but returned to the United States in 1968 where she learned of the Women's Movement from American artist Joyce Kozloff. In 1972 Damon attended Womanhouse. After this visit, she began creating street art performances in New York City. Her performance, The 7000 Year Old Woman in 1977 in New York City,[2][3] addressed feminist themes of violence and oppression through a ritualistic performance.[4]

She has participated in a number of exhibitions and performances and her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[5] She was a founding member[6] of the Women's Caucus for Art and received the Mid-Life Career Award from the organization in 1989.[7] She won the Arts and Healing Network Award[8] in 2000. At the age of 50, Betsy Damon changed the focus of her art to center on water, the conservation and protection of water and how it impacts society. Her efforts in activist art influenced the annual San Antonio River clean up,[9] as well as educated many people on the importance of water.[10] She is an international water artist who primarily focuses on ecological works.[11] Her work raised awareness in China as well, her best known project being The Living Water Garden in the city of Chengdu in Sichuan Province, China, the first water-themed ecological park in urban China.[12][13] In 2009, Damon was named as a Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project.[14]

Non-profit and NGO connections

A goal of Damon was to eliminate sexism all over the world. From 1980-2000 Damon founded and directed No Limits for Women Artists[15] an international organization that sought to improve female leadership and help men in becoming independent allies. In her "What is Creativity" manifesto, Damon strongly asserted she believed "creativity is the birthright of all people"[4] but it is something controlled by the government who feared its power in influencing social and political change. Art was activism to Damon. She believed the best way combat the exploitation of women was through uniting them together; her organization worked to foster strong connections among its members. Members were required to participate in daily telephone calls with each other. These calls gave women the opportunity to talk about their art and their goals for the day; increasing personal motivation and productivity.[4]

In 1991 Damon founded Keepers of the Waters,[16] a nonprofit organization that serves as an international community to encourage "art, science and community projects for the understanding and remediation of living water systems."[16] The nonprofit is run with a collaborative approach[17] and was started with the support of the Hubert Humphrey Institute.[16]

In 2006, Damon, alongside a group of artists, scientists, and funders, met in Vancouver and created a summary report for UNESCO titled "Art in Ecology – A Think Tank on Arts and Sustainability."[18] UNESCO had commissioned a report in advance of this meeting titled "Mapping the Terrain of Contemporary EcoART Practice", of which the meeting and summary report were a result.[18]

Performance art/installation art

In the 1970s, Damon began to work as a performance artist. Her work explored the connection between women and nature, often through covering herself with natural materials such as feathers and bark.[19]

Performances

7000 Year Old Woman, 1977

In 1977, she created a piece called The 7,000 Year Old Woman and performed it in New York City twice. The first performance happened on March 21st, 1977 at the Cayman Gallery. The second performance happened on May 21st, 1977 publicly on Prince Street near West Broadway. Damon commented that the figure that the 7000 year old woman embodies "is my sister, mother, my grandmothers, my great grandmothers, friends and lovers. She is my woman line of 7,000 years. She is me, the me that I know very little about.”[20][4]

The Cayman Gallery performance took place in the presence of other women. Damon painted her body, hair and face in white and hung 420 small bags filled with colored flour on her body. A woman drew a spiral path for her to follow. Damon walked the spiral, cutting the bags on her body with a pair of scissors. The performance concluded with her surrounded by the empty bags; audience members were allowed to take them. Damon offered them in hopes that others would perform their own rites.[21] Damon states in a recount of the performance, published in Heresies Vol. 3, (a Lesbian Art and Artists publication), that the work commented on time. She writes "I came out of the piece with a knowledge about the burden of time. A woman sixty years old is maybe twenty times more burdened than the thirty year old by her story. If we had had7000 years of celebrated female energy this would be different."[21]

In the second performance on Prince Street, Damon performs the piece for the public. For this experience Damon recruits artist Su Friedrich to assist her. This time she was adorned with 400 bags of colored flour and contained within a sand circle. Friedrich was responsible for tying the bags onto Damon's exposed body. Men, women and children of all ages were the spectators in this performance. The audience was unpredictable. Her friends brought flowers while boys egged her. Damon walked the circle cutting the bags from her body and handing them to the audience. As more bags were given away her sense of vulnerability rose. In the Heresies article she states she finishes the piece by returning to the center of the circle.[21]

Damon comments that after that performance "I never knew until that afternoon how completely all things female had been eradicated from our streets. So totally is this true we do not even notice that she is missing."[21]

Blind Beggar Woman and the Virgin Mary, 1979

In a 1979 piece called Blind Beggarwoman and the Virgin Mary, Damon, as the central performer, dressed in rags and bags of dust, with gauze taped over her eyes. Crouching over a begging bowl filled with more pouches, she asked the spectators to whisper stories from their lives to her. The goal of the piece was to create a space where women's stories could be told. In Damon discussed the piece in an interview, saying "In that performance, I asked the question: who are the female Homers, the female storytellers, who were the containers of history and memory? On the street, I begged for stories from people’s lives, while my eyes were covered with these very obvious patches. I practiced with a friend of mine who was blind. People started saying that I was the multi-breasted female goddess and stuff like that, but that was not the origin of this piece. May Stevens got it right—she was the first to recognize that the work was also a mutilation image."[22] The other performers either crouched low or sat on the floor, repeating "gestures -a woman endlessly reciting beads to the Virgin, another transferring sawdust from one bucket to another, a third, dressed in a mound of the small pouches filled with colored powder, systematically slitting them open with a knife until she was nude-were suggestive of women's endurance and of the cyclic nature of women's work." [23]

Rape Memory, 1980

As part of The Great American Lesbian Art Show in Los Angeles in 1980, Damon performed Rape Memory. Against a chorus of voices trying to silence her, she attempted to share her own traumatic rape experience. They chanted “You can’t talk, don’t say that, don’t say” while she pleaded “I’m trying, let me, please let me talk.” After an hour, she was allowed to describe an assault she experienced when she was two and a half years old. Audience members were allowed to share their own experiences, and they did after her performance. Damon sought to heal through community and encouraged women to speak out.[4]

Installations

Shrine for Everywoman, 1980

As part of the International Festival of Women Artists in 1980 in Copenhagen, Damon created an interactive installation piece. Damon invited women to write thoughts and stories down and took these thoughts and put them in small bags, hanging them in rows on cords like prayer flags. Women’s thoughts formed a gathering space. A mandala, a buddhist symbol of the universe marked the space as a place of community. The contents of the bags contained stories, hopes, fears, and visions. Damon created a space of recovery and spirituality.[4]

Exhibitions and major works

Performances
  • 1985-90: The Shrine for Everywoman.[15]
  • 1983-1989: A Mediation with Stones for the Survival of the Planet.[15]
  • 1981-83: A Rape Memory.[15]
  • 1979-81: Blind Beggar Woman.[15]
  • 1977: 7,000 Year Old Woman, New York, N.Y.[2][24]

Shows
  • 2019: Keepers of the Waters: Lhasa & Chengdu, Taipei Biennial.[15]
  • 2012: Feminist, and..., Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA.[15]
  • 1986-1991: A Memory of Clean Water, Everhart Museum.[15]
  • 1990: An Homage to Rivers, Aspen Art Museum Biennial.[15]
  • January 25 – March 22, 1987: Special Projects (Winter 1987), MoMA PS1.[1]
  • January 17 – March 14, 1982: The Wild Art Show, MoMA PS1.[1]

Further reading

Articles
  • Damon, Betsy. "The 7,000 Year Old Woman," Heresies 1, no.3 (Fall 1977)
  • Forney, Matt. "Environmentalism By Ordinary People is Perilous in China--U.S. Woman Makes Enemies But Perseveres to Help Clean Up Stinking River," The Wall Street Journal (Jul. 2000)
  • Carruthers, Beth. "Art, Sweet Art: Adaptive, Hybrid and Flexibe, EcoART Moves Hearts, Changes Minds and Ultimately Alters Behaviors," Alternatives Journal 32, no. 4-5 (Dec. 2006)
  • Jones, Diana. "Development Project Uses Art to Control Water Flow in Larimer," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Jan. 2015)

Books

Web sources

References
  1. "Betsy Damon | MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2018-03-25.
  2. "The 7,000 Year Old Woman". Jennifer Stob. 2012-08-23. Retrieved 2017-11-07.
  3. "A Conversation with Betsy Damon: Environmental Art as a Life of Action". Bloom. 2016-09-06. Retrieved 2018-03-25.
  4. Filippone, Christine Verfasser. For the blood of Gaia : Betsy Damon's quest for living water. OCLC 1078665270.
  5. "Betsy Damon | Blue Hole, from Femfolio | The Met". The Metropolitan Museum of Art, i.e. The Met Museum. Retrieved 2017-11-07.
  6. "Keepers of the Waters: The Betsy Damon Archive". Asia Art Archive in America. 2018-03-07. Retrieved 2018-03-25.
  7. Heller, Jules; Heller, Nancy G. (2013-12-19). North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary. Routledge. ISBN 9781135638894.
  8. "Betsy Damon: 2000 AHN Awardee". www.artheals.org. Retrieved 2017-11-07.
  9. Forney, Matt (2000-06-20). "Environmentalism By Ordinary People is Perilous in China --- U.S. Woman Makes Enemies But Perseveres to Help Clean Up Stinking River". The Wall Street Journal: A.22 – via ProQuest.
  10. "A Conversation with Betsy Damon: Environmental Art as a Life of Action". Bloom. 2016-09-06. Retrieved 2017-12-08.
  11. Jones, Diana (2015-01-26). "Development project uses art to control water flow in Larimer". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved 2018-03-25.
  12. "Living Water Garden". www.gochengdu.cn. Retrieved 2018-03-25.
  13. "Betsy Damon – Artist, Spokesperson and Guardian of Our Living Waters". www.healing-power-of-art.org. Retrieved 2017-12-08.
  14. "2009 Honorees". National Women's History Project. Archived from the original on 19 March 2015. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
  15. "Betsy Damon CV". Keepers of the Waters. Retrieved 23 April 2020.
  16. Damon, Betsy (2017). "Keepers of the Waters". Keepers of Waters. Retrieved 2018-03-25.
  17. Moyer, Twylene (2012). The New Earthwork: Art, Action, Agency. Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press. p. 129. ISBN 9780295991641.
  18. Carruthers, Beth (2006). "Art, Sweet Art: Adaptive, Hybrid and Flexible, EcoART Moves Hearts, Changes Minds and Ultimately Alters Behavior". Alternatives Journal. 32 (4–5): 24–30 – via Gale Databases.
  19. Byrd, Jeffery (2002). "Performance Art" (PDF). glbtq archive. Retrieved March 10, 2020.
  20. Damon, Betsy. "The 7000 Year Old Woman". Heresies. no. 3 (Fall 1977).
  21. HERESIES VOL 3: Lesbian Art and Artists. New York, New York: Heresies Collective Inc. 1977. pp. 2, 10–12.
  22. Damon, Betsy. “Interview with Betsy Damon.” Interview by Petra Poelzl. Asia Art Archive 27 March 2017
  23. Champagne, L. (1980). [Review of the book A Blind Beggarwoman: Memories and Images, by Betsy Damon, and: Be Mine, Valentine by Barbara Hammer, and: Rosemary Hochachild]. Performing Arts Journal 5(3), 40-41. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/655519.
  24. Damon, Betsy (1977). "The 7,000 Year Old Woman" (PDF). Heresies. 1 (3): 11–13.
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