Vaughn Bell creates art to spark curiosity, grow ecological awareness, and deepen community relationships. Through cultivating conviviality, or “living together,”​ her public art practice connects people with each other and with our other-than-human kin. The hope is: to make art that points from the Anthropocene to the Symbiocene- an era of living with.

Vaughn approaches each project through careful engagement with places and people including collaborators, stewards, scientists, educators, youth and elders. Her process often includes welcoming people to create and engage with the local environment in hands-on material ways.

ABOUT VAUGHN
Vaughn is a mother, a cold water swimmer, and a gardener. She grew up in Syracuse, NY and Norfolk, VA and studied at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and Brown University. Vaughn lives and works in the watersheds of Longfellow Creek and the Duwamish River, where they meet salt water/Puget Sound/the Salish Sea, on the  ancestral lands of Coast Salish people including the Duwamish tribe in Seattle, Washington, USA. 

BIO
Vaughn Bell (she/they) is an internationally recognized artist, a public art planner and consultant, and an educator. Her artworks bring people up close to plants in immersive sculptures, reveal the flows of water in urban spaces, and cultivate ecological relationships of care and symbiosis.
 
Vaughn creates public art rooted in local communities and ecologies. She has created art for the sidewalks of Seattle, Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in London, Chicago Botanic Garden, the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education in Philadelphia, the Brightwater Wastewater Treatment Plant in King County, WA, the Hermitage of San Bartolomeo in Abruzzo, Italy, Seattle Public Utilities Drainage and Wastewater, and many others. Vaughn has also created commissioned artworks at Musee Brugge (Belgium), Kunsthaus Zurich (Switzerland), Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (USA), and venues in Germany, Paris, Brussels, Krakow, and Buenos Aires. Her work has been featured in The New Earthwork: Art Action Agency, from ISC Press and Art and Ecology Now by Andrew Brown from Thames and Hudson, among many other publications. 
 
Vaughn’s 20+ years of experience in public and environmental art includes in-depth work with government and art institutions, with a special focus on water and transportation infrastructure. Vaughn was staff artist in the Seattle Department of Transportation, integrating public art into transportation infrastructure. She has written art plans such as the Seattle Public Utilities Drainage and Wastewater Art Master Plan and works in project management and facilitation in her role as Lead Artist on the Ship Canal Water Quality Project.  Through thoughtful community engagement and collaboration with people from many backgrounds and disciplines, Vaughn brings people together to envision diverse art experiences and helps bring to life the work of other artists.

Vaughn has taught studio courses in public and ecological art, art foundations, drawing, and other topics as a faculty member at Western Washington University and the University of Washington-Tacoma.

CONTACT
​[email protected]