I have been working with Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in London for over a year on the development of a program for their summer exhibitions. Due to the current world-wide pandemic situation, the program is postponed. Here are a few sample images from project development.  I have been working closely with Kew staff, horticulturalists, and Setworks design/build on the design of the installation. We built a prototype last summer to test ideas and see how the various plant species would thrive in specific conditions. Hopeful that this can continue in the future!

Courtesy of MOCAK. Photo: R. Sosin

Thanks to the amazing facilities staff at UWT. More images to come of the complete, installed artwork....

My work is included in the exhibition Nature in Art at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow. Looks like a fascinating exhibition, if you are in Poland please check it out!

Meet Your Creek combines ecological literacy and community art practice around Longfellow Creek. As part of the project, funded by Seattle Public Utilities 1% for Art funds, I invited other artists with a connection to the creek to create "postcards from the creek." Their wonderful works are now posted on the blog. Please check it out!

Very excited to be working on this project with King County!
www.4culture.org/vaughn-bell-selected-for-rain-gardens-x-public-art-opportunity/

As development continues throughout King County, more and more of our surfaces are impervious. When rain hits pavement and asphalt, it collects pollutants as it travels into Puget Sound’s streams, lakes, rivers, and bays—this is stormwater.
In order to address stormwater issues, King County’s Water and Land Resource Division Stormwater Services Section (the Section) is developing a program to incentivize green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) on private properties in unincorporated King County. It partnership with the Section, we put out a call for an artist to reimagine rain gardens and help get the public engaged with them. Now, we are excited to announce that Vaughn Bell was selected for this unique opportunity.

Vaughn brings experience working with people across disciplines—engineers, community members, young people, scientists, artists, and many others. Her experience working with Seattle Public Utilities Drainage and Wastewater since 2016 as Artist in Residence has united her interests in environmental policy and public art.

Super Natural explores artist-imagined innovation for human interactions with the natural world. Ari Weinkle’s typographic animations play with natural forms within the context of 3D-rendered alphabets. Emma Steinkraus, a fine-art painter, decorated a silk jacket with images of flora that can be foraged from the landscape of the Ozarks.

Vaughn Bell’s hanging plexiglass terrariums invite gallery viewers to stick their heads into plant space. Members of the fall Botany course will curate and cultivate the plants in these forms while the exhibit is on view.

Exhibition runs until December 8, 2018 at the Warner Gallery at Millbrook School.

Image of "Local Homes" courtesy of Chicago Botanic Garden, this work is re-created in a new form at Millbrook School.

My colleague and collaborator Antonio José García Cano has added content to our blog about the WATERshed project. WATERshed is a trans-disciplinary effort that connects the work of student artists and student scientists in exploration of the Puyallup River Watershed. Check it out!

The University of Washington-Tacoma is located within the watershed of the Puyallup River, which drains into Commencement Bay and to Puget Sound. Vaughn Bell’s Eco-Art class TARTS 402 has begun an on-going exploration of the local watershed through walks, mapping, journaling and other art practices. This project was developed out of collaborative research between Vaughn Bell, Antonio José García Cano (a Fulbright Fellow from Spain), and UW-Tacoma students.

WATERshed involves an exploration of our local watershed at the macro and micro scales. Students explore, research, and reveal the larger Puyallup Watershed through field trips, mapping exercises, journaling, drawing and discussions. Simultaneously, students examine the local conditions of wáter flow on a site inmediately adjacent to the Art Building on campus and propose and create artworks for site to address environmental conditions. Student work, documents and reflections become part of on-going exhibition and archive on campus.