CALYX Celebrates
Fire, Fury, and Resilience
with Oregon Artist Betty LaDuke
Please join us in ekphrastic appreciation of the artist Betty LaDuke, whose most recent exhibition, Fire, Fury, and Resilience: Totem Witnesses and Turtle Wisdom, will be at the Corvallis Museum from October 7, 2022 – January 22, 2023. The exhibit opens with an artist’s reception from 2:00 – 4:00 on October 8, 2022 at the Corvallis Museum.
Visit the show and respond to an image in the collection. Prompts for ekphrastic response are provided by CALYX here, but you are free to take your own approach to the work. Submit your response as poetry or prose during CALYX’s open submission period, October 1 – December 31, 2022. Poetry submissions may include up to six poems per submission, while prose submissions are limited to 5,000 words or fewer. See more details at our General Submission guidelines here.
Selected pieces will be published in CALYX: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women, Volume 34:2 (winter/spring 2024) or on the CALYX website. For those unable to attend the exhibition in person, select images from the collection are available here (all images are on wood panels between 24″ and 32″ wide that have been shaped, carved, and painted):
Turtle Water Protector
Turtle Heirloom Seed Keeper
Social Distancing Solitude
The Border Children (I Really Do Care)
Hungry for Hope
Am I Next?
Still We Rise
Artist’s Statement
Women of the world, from mud and thatch huts or urban dwellings, inspire my art. Witnessing their dignity, creativity, and resilience as they attend to their families, farm, teach, participate in communal, social, and political events, and utilize their aesthetic skills in fulfilling traditional or personal needs—they are my role models.
A flow of human energy, rooted to survival rhythms, rites of passage, and the expression of joy and sorrow, in peace and war—these are the themes of my work. These women, young or old, are my goddesses. My paintings embellish their lives—our lives—between myth and reality. bettyladuke.com.