Betsy Damon

Betsy Damon (born 1940) is an American ecofeminist artist whose work has been influenced by her activism in women's, gay, and environmental rights.

Damon was born in 1940 to American diplomat George Huntington Damon and Harriet Atkins.

Damon is an aunt to journalist Arwa Damon, as well as a great-granddaughter of investment banker Henry Hornblower, founder of Hornblower & Weeks.

She spent her childhood living in Istanbul.

Damon received her master's degree from Columbia University in 1966.

She then 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 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.

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, addressed feminist themes of violence and oppression through a ritualistic performance.

Damon has participated in a number of exhibitions and performances and her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 1977, she created a piece called 7000 Year Old Woman and performed it in New York City twice.

Her first performance took place on March 21, 1977, at the Cayman Gallery.

Her second performance took place on May 21, 1977, on Prince Street near West Broadway.

Damon commented that the figure that 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.”

The Cayman Gallery performance took place in the presence of other women.

Damon painted her body, hair and face in white and hung 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.

In Heresies Vol. 3, (a Lesbian Art and Artists publication), Damon 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 had 7000 years of celebrated female energy, this would be different."

Damon performed the piece for the general public on Prince Street, with the assistance of artist Su Friedrich.

Friedrich adorned Damon's body with 400 bags of colored flour and confined herself to within a sand circle.

From 1980 to 2000 Damon founded and directed No Limits for Women Artists, an international organization that sought to improve female leadership and help men in becoming independent allies.

No Limits for Women Artists worked to foster strong connections among its members, requiring members to participate in daily phone calls with each other.

These calls gave women the opportunity to talk about their art, goals, motivation, and productivity.

She was a founding member of the Women's Caucus for Art and received the Mid-Life Career Award from the organization in 1989.

In 1991 Damon founded Keepers of the Waters, 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."

The nonprofit is run with a collaborative approach and was started with the support of the Hubert Humphrey Institute.

She won the Arts and Healing Network Award in 2000.

At the age of 50, 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, as well as educated many people on the importance of water.

She is an international water artist who primarily focuses on ecological works.

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.

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."

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.

In 2009, Damon was named as a Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project.

Damon was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2023.

One of Damon's goals was to eliminate sexism.