About

Lauren Bartone works in an interdisciplinary balance of painting, community dialogue, and archival research. After initially studying painting in Florence, she completed a BA in fine art at UCLA in 2002. This was followed by an MA in Education at UC Berkeley in 2005 and an MFA at VCFA in 2012. Community based and collaborative mapping projects include A City in Maps (2015) produced as the artist in residence at the deYoung Museum of Art in San Francisco, and Paradise, A Map for the Centennial of the Panama Pacific International Exposition and SF New City Atlas for the Art on Market Street poster series with the San Francisco Arts Council. More recent work is focused on a studio based painting practice that explores for example the relationship between labor and cultural history. Recent solo exhibitions include 16 Tons (2018) at the College of Marin Gallery, De Rerum Natura (2022) at Park Life Gallery and Botanical Genealogies (2023) through a recent residency at the Orto Botanico in Palermo, Sicily. Her work has been generously supported with grants by the Pirkle Jones Foundation, the Marin Arts Council, VCFA Levin/Lutz Award and the Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry at UC Berkeley. She is a current phd student in the Italian Studies Department at UC Berkeley with a designated emphasis in folklore and her research focuses on the visual and material culture of Sicily and the Southern Italian diaspora. She currently lives with her partner and three children in downtown San Rafael, California.