Betty Beaumont
Sculptor
New Arts Program is pleased to present new works in a solo exhibition by New York conceptual artist Betty Beaumont entitled Who Will Our Children Sing Songs About in 100 Years? from September 19 through December 6, 2008.
For Beaumont, educating the world’s children in the context of our global population explosion raises questions and she has taken them to Main Street. Broadly speaking, is education who we are? As we look around the globe at countries with the greatest population explosion, China, Africa, India and the US, who is guiding our children? Who will enable them across generations to become innovators and collaborators in shaping our dynamically unfolding world? Why are only 25,000 children in America studying Chinese when 3 million children in China are learning English?
As the US presidential campaign races towards election day amid far reaching global credit crisis bailouts, the solo exhibition Who Will Our Children Sing Songs About in 100 Years? is a primer about shapes and shaping. With the entire gallery floor covered with rose-colored paper, each of four sculptural installations either forms a line, a circle, a triangle or a rectangle. Children’s xo laptops display world clock counters while a Swahili clock shifts our most basic assumptions. A multiple language tear-off textwork questions Which Way, What Way, Whose Way.
Dharma Chakra, a circle eight feet in diameter, consisting of tiny blue pre-school chairs, hangs near the middle of a twenty-foot long wall. Mirrors at either end of the wall create multiple overlapping images of the circular form. An audio time ticker is set for New Delhi, India. Golden Rule, a ten-foot row, a line of chrome and yellow plastic school chair-desks are installed at eye level on a freestanding wall. A series of abstract shapes (elements of the chair-desks), appear to float for a moment as one approaches, perhaps to be understood as a ‘disconnect’ that many students feel. The feet of the school chair-desks are no longer sitting on the floor but wall, signaling a paradigm shift, possibly one needed in higher education. Green Rectangle consists of a chalkboard black wall on which green plastic children’s chairs form a rectangle eight-feet by six-feet with the top of the chairs facing in on all four sides. A dawn-to-dusk Swahili clock is set to one o’clock the first hour after sunrise. A world clock cycles through many statistics including population, global warming, energy and food. Golden Triangle consists of two red walls at ninety degrees on which yellow plastic pre-school chairs are stacked in an eight feet by twelve feet triangle. On a computer screen an online population clock of China spins.
Whose Way, What Way, Which Way is a tear-off textwork primer in an English, Chinese, Swahili and Hindi sequence that repeats to form a 500-sheet tablet. The tablet is installed below eye level on the wall. As evidence of participation and to reveal a different text the viewer may take part in changing the work by tearing a sheet from the tablet and adding it to the pile of accumulated paper spilling from a ‘homemade’ child’s chair sitting on the paper floor.
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Betty Beaumont works in downtown New York, her home since 1973. For four decades Beaumont has produced thoughtful and provocative work in a variety of media including photography, installations, public interventions and new media. Her work challenges global social awareness, as well as socioeconomic and ecological practices.
Beaumont has investigated such issues as energy and species diversity and is also involved with solution-based sustainability strategies, which reflect contemporary, historic and cultural perspectives and environmental and social conditions.
Betty Beaumont received a BA from California State University in 1969 and an MA from the University of California at Berkeley in 1972. She has received numerous grants and awards including the 2006 Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of California at Berkeley, Creative Capital Foundation grants, National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and grants, New York State Council on the Arts fellowships and Pollock-Krasner Foundation grants. She has shown at museums and galleries around the world including the Whitney Museum of Art, P.S. 1 MoMA, Queens Museum, Carriage Trade Gallery (NYC), UBS Art Gallery (NYC), Esso Gallery (NYC), American Fine Art (NYC), Damon Brandt Gallery (NYC), Exit Art (NYC), Hudson River Museum (Yonkers, NY), Katonah Museum (Katonah, NY), National Museum of Modern Art (Kyoto and Tokyo, Japan), Museum Het Domein (Netherlands), Bibliotéca Nacional José Marti (Havana, Cuba), Galerie Engstrom (Stockholm, Sweden), Bea Voigt Galerie (Munich, Germany), Stalinova Pomniku, Letenske Plani (Prague), Ota Gallery (Tokyo, Japan) and the Richard Demarco Gallery (Edinburgh, Scotland).
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New Arts Program, located at 173 W. Main Street, Kutztown, Pennsylvania, is open Wednesday through Saturday, 11 AM to 3 PM and other times by appointment. Admission is free. A twenty-one-page catalog accompanies the exhibition and is available upon request.
Contact New Arts Program:
610 683 6440
Photos and other information is available upon request.
