“Water is the foundation of life, the connective might of the universe. Therefore sustaining the water systems must be the foundation of planning and development.” - Betsy Damon




The mission of Keepers of the Waters is to inspire and promote projects that combine art, science and community involvement to restore, preserve and remediate water sources.

Keepers of the Waters is a practical and inspirational network. With it’s innovative format of empowering people and sharing information the organization effectively releases initiative in others. Keepers believes that every individual cares and Keepers cares for all individuals. It is only a vast well of hopelessness that robs people of their ability to act.

Keepers is at the vanguard of integrated approaches to a vast complexity of water issues through collaborative innovative design, community organizing, mentoring, educating, providing workshops, and functioning as a cross cultural resource.




Keepers of the Waters is directed by environmental artist Betsy Damon (photo on right). She has an MFA from Columbia University and has been an internationally known performance and installation artist. In 1985, while making a paper cast of a dry stone riverbed in Castle Valley, Utah, she decided to devote the rest of her artistic life to water. She founded Keepers of the Waters in 1991 in Minnesota, USA with the support of the Hubert Humphrey Institute.

The Living Water Garden, which she designed with landscape designer Margie Ruddick, the Chengdu Landscape Bureau and many Chinese artists and designers, won the 1998 Top Honor Award from the Waterfront Center in Washington, D.C., and an award from the Environmental Design and Research Association. The park was one of the reasons for the UN Habitat Best Model Cities Award that went to Chengdu.

Ms. Damon has worked for the Beijing Water Bureau designing restoration and remediation systems for rivers and wetlands, and works with community groups and cities to restore and reveal the essence of water. Betsy Damon is available for lectures, consultations, grassroots development, workshops and design charrettes. Betsy Damon's resume is available here.

For further information about Keepers of the Waters, back issues of our newsletter, support materials, videos, and slide documentation about Betsy Damon's work, contact Lonnie Feather. Keepers of the Waters Online Network is administered and edited by Lonnie Feather, an artist, working in Portland, Oregon, USA. Her art can be seen at www.lonniefeather.com.




Keepers of the Waters is a U.S.-based non profit organization that serves as an international communications network for people actively engaged in projects that transform our relationship to water. Our mission is to inspire and promote projects that restore, preserve and remediate water sources using a combination of art, science, and community involvement.

Science is the base of information that people need to understand the issue; Art is the means of communication and inspiration; Community involvement brings in all those who wish to restore and preserve water quality. Blending these disciplines helps to make the natural process of water treatment both visible and integrated into daily life and culture.

Global water quality is dependent on each community having a sustainable water source that they know about and are responsible for. Cities all over the planet can be filled with vibrant, water and art-filled community centers, parks, schoolyards businesses and backyards that help people become intimately connected to their water sources. These projects will lead the way for fully sustainable water infrastructures, visible and integrated into our everyday lives, rather than hidden under the ground.

When people join together to solve a problem they do better than if they tried to solve it alone. Through water, we are interconnected and related to all other living things. Like water, we are one giant family, always seeking to join one another.

Betsy Damon, founder and director, has developed a series of resources to help you Start Your Own Living Water Project.


Hear Betsy Damon speak in national forums:

Albuquerque, NM   February 22, 9:30AM   Pyramid Marriott Hotel    13th Water Conservation / Xeriscape Conference    www.xeriscapenm.com/xeriscape_conferences/2008/agenda.php

Palm Beach, FL       March 7, 11:30AM       The Beach Club, 755 N County Road    Arthur R. Marshall Foundation Tenth Anniversary Recognition Luncheon   www.artmarshall.org/calendar.htm

San Francisco, CA   April 25, late morning session   Ecocity World Summit, Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave.   www.ecocityworldsummit.org/program.htm


For technical issues with this website please contact the webmaster Larry Rogers.


At a crisis in her life thirty-five years ago, Betsy Damon turned to her dreams and visions as a source of imagery and action. Abandoning her traditional training, she initiated performance art projects creating temporary spaces for herself in public ‘unclaimed’ spots. Then, after a seven week cross country camping trip with her two children, Betsy found herself reconnected to primal elements in the natural world – the sound of wind, the flow of water, the forest, the rain.

Rooted in the women’s movement of the 70’s, she founded a national network of support groups for women artists. Through the performance work and building of a network, she evolved numerous skills that began to understand the value of relationships as a foundation for initiating new forms. After casting 250’ of a dry river bed and committing herself to water as a central metaphor and theme for her life and work, she moved increasingly away from the artist as individual to the artist as central to community.

Since the forming of Keepers of the Waters with the Humphrey Institute of the University of Minnesota in 1991, she moved increasingly towards creating community based models of her own unique vision. These works communicate the essence of water and inspire hope. She sculpts, she mentors, and she leads workshops and lectures. Her work in China includes the first public art event for the environment. The now world known Living Water Garden, numerous award winning master plans, city planning are all a part of her ongoing repertoire. In the U.S., she is no less productive with active green groups modeled from Keepers and public/private art commissions.

Her inspiration comes from extensive research of sacred water sites and ever probing knowledge of biologic and earth sciences involved in living systems. Always seeking new ways to articulate the complexity of water and to engage everyone in caring for this precious resource, Betsy continues her passion.