Betty Beaumont

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Artist Betty Beaumont (born 1946 in Toronto, Canada) lives and works in New York City, New York. Beaumont is now a U. S. Citizen.

Beaumont received a B.A. in Art from California State University in 1969. In 1972 Beaumont received a M.A. in Architecture from University of California, Berkeley, College of Environmental Design.

Since 1969, Beaumont's works have helped define Ecological Art as a model of interdisciplinary problem solving. As an internationally recognized environmental and conceptual artist, her work is marked by deep-seated social and ecological concerns, ranging widely from experimental landscape projects, photo-based art, image/text/object works, information art, and interactive combined-media installations. Beaumont is frequently chosen as a panelist on subjects involving environmental art and collaborative projects. Beaumont has worked with numerous venues including ArtSci99 Symposium, Columbia University, Bell Labs/Lucent Technologies, Interactive Telecommunications Project, Japan Radio Network WMBS and University of Oregon.

Her writing has appeared in Art Monthly, New York Magazine, The New York Times, NY ARTS, The Village Voice, Vita Nova Tokyo, Z Magazine and zingmagazine among others.

Beaumont's work has been shown in Canada, Cuba, Czech Republic, England, Germany, Holland], Japan, Mexico, Scotland, South Korea, Spain, Sweden as well as the United States.

Beaumont has received five National Endowment for the Arts grants (1997, 2002), three New York State Council for the Arts grants, two Pollock-Krasner grants (1998), and the German Unwelt Stiftung Award. She has served as a member of the Board of Advisors for the Art & Technology Program at the New York Hall of Science as well as on the Board of Directors of Women Make Movies.

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[edit] Work

  • With a significant body of environmentally and socially concerned research-based projects, Beaumont's work has been shown in New York at P.S. 1 Museum, the Queens Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art and also The Hudson River Museum, The National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo and Kyoto,
  • "Ocean Landmark" (1980) is an underwater work on the floor of the Atlantic, made of 500 tons of processed coal-waste, a potential pollutant that has undergone a planned transformation into a flourishing ecosystem—a lush underwater garden.
  • One of the artists featured in the video, "Totalitarian Zone," by Czechoslovakian film/video maker, Vaclav Kucera. 1991
  • Incited by her landlord's constant threat of conviction, Beaumont has created this body of work that includes boxes and vitrines combined with letters and an active archiving of her displaced works. This exhibition also includes a series of public forums addressing the continual displacement of artists in contemporary urban settings.

[edit] Quotes

  • Betty Beaumont comes to mind as an artist who began as a political artist and evolved to an activist artist. Beaumont first documented environmental devastation with her photographic series in 1969 of the Santa Barbara, California oil spill. Her work a decade later took a significant change, whereas instead of exposing these problems of nature and industry colliding, she offered a solution. In her work that merged art and environmental science, Ocean Landmark Installation completed in 1980. -Nicholas Lambert [1]

[edit] Readings

  • Betty Beaumont; Marilu Knode; Rochdale Art Gallery (Rochdale, England). Betty Beaumont : changing landscapes : art in an expanded field : 26 August-23 September, 1989 (Rochdale, Lancashire, England : Rochdale Art Gallery, 1989) (Worldcat link: [2]) OCLC 79731156
  • John K Grande. Art nature dialogues : interviews with environmental artists (Albany : State University of New York Press, 2004) (Worldcat link: [3]) ISBN 0791461947; ISBN 9780791461945; ISBN 0791461939; ISBN 9780791461938
  • Barbara C Matilsky; Queens Museum of Art. Fragile ecologies : contemporary artists' interpretations and solutions (New York : Rizzoli International, 1992) (Worldcat link: [4]) ISBN 0847815927; ISBN 9780847815920


[edit] See also

[edit] External links