Betsy Damon

Betsy Damon is an internationally acclaimed artist who has been called a practical visionary and a humanist. Her work has been widely reviewed, exhibited and taught. She’s known for her performance works The 7,000-Year-Old Woman (1976) and The Living Water Garden (1998) in Chengdu, Sichuan, China. She has directed many collaborative public performance events, mostly notably in Chengdu and Lhasa, China. Betsy’s awards include the Bush Foundation, Heinz foundation, NEA, UN Habitat, Waterfront Center Top Honor, 5 awards from the ASLA and others.

For the past four decades Betsy’s work has focused on a central subject: water, which she reveals as the connective, creative and collaborative medium behind all life. She promotes public consciousness of Living Water and invites us to place water itself as the foundation of all planning and design. In its search for truth, her work traverses the complexities of water—from a molecular scale to the levels of ecosystems and societies. Betsy’s work has been archived by Asia Art Archive and is available at aaa.org.