Betty Beaumont

Artist Betty Beaumont (born 1946 in Toronto, Canada) lives and works in New York City, New York. Beaumont is now a U. S. Citizen. She works in the field of environmental art, creating installations out of waste products.

Life and work

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.

Her work "Ocean Landmark" (1978-80) created an ocean-floor habitat, encouraging fish and vegetation to thrive off the coast of New York. [Interview with John Grande in John K. Grande, Edward Lucie-Smith, "Art Nature Dialogues", SUNY Press, 2004, p151. ISBN 0791461947] The work is made of 500 tons of processed coal-waste.

She is a frequent conference panelist on subjects involving environmental art and collaborative projects and 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.

She has exhibited 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, as well as Canada, Cuba, Czech Republic, England, Germany, Holland, Mexico, Scotland, South Korea, Spain and Sweden.

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. She is one of the artists featured in the video "Totalitarian Zone" (1991) by Czechoslovakian film/video maker, Vaclav Kucera.

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 [http://www.sc.edu/uscpress/2002/3492.html]

References

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: [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/79731156?tab=details] ) OCLC 79731156
*Barbara C Matilsky; Queens Museum of Art. "Fragile ecologies : contemporary artists' interpretations and solutions" (New York : Rizzoli International, 1992) (Worldcat link: [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/25833218?tab=details] ) ISBN 0847815927; ISBN 9780847815920

ee also

*site-specific art
*Environmental sculpture
*Land art (earth art)

External links

* [http://greenmuseum.org/content/artist_index/artist_id-37.html "Cable Piece" Macomb, Illinois, 1977]
* [http://www.nyu.edu/classes/beaumont/collaboration "Ocean Landmark" Fire Island National Seashore, New York 1980]
* [http://www.michelethursz.com/site/port.php?name=beaumont Bio, Betty Beaumont]
* [http://www.lmcc.net/art/swingspace/15nassau/15nassau/2006.10.26boxedinboxedout/index.html "Boxed In, Boxed Out"]
* [http://greenmuseum.org/c/ecovention/sect4.html ecovention: Current at to Transform Ecology, Habitat Architecture, Ocean Habitats]
* [http://www.channel.creative-capital.org/grantee_4.html Creative Capital, New York]