Lauren Vargas
Lauren is a daughter of God who loves painting, mentoring young people, staying home with her one-year-old daughter, and Jesus. She was high school math teacher for nearly a decade in the Philadelphia public and charter school systems, where she was involved with students’ lives beyond the classroom through tutoring and a number of extracurricular activities. While she is not currently teaching full-time, she continues to mentor high school girls in the Olney and Hunting Park neighborhoods through Young Life and her church community. Lauren studied fine arts at the University of Pennsylvania and worked for many years in community arts, leading classes for young people in oil painting, drawing, and silk screening. Her own work focuses primarily on portraiture in oil paint. She lives in the Hunting Park neighborhood of Philadelphia with her husband, daughter, and no cats.
Awarded Grants
2016
Art and Change Grant (ACG)
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Overview
Lauren Vargas will build community through storytelling and the portraits of residents in Hunting Park in order to challenge the mostly negative images portrayed in the mainstream media of North Philadelphia. Lauren will organize a community dinner for neighbors to gather and share personal histories and positive stories about their block, followed by family photo shoots and portrait sessions to capture the spirit and strength of the community. The final product will be a series of portraits in oil paint of the neighbors, including a 140-character story written as a "tweet" by each participant, which will be displayed during a block celebration.
Partner
2015
Art and Change Grant (ACG)
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Overview
Lauren will celebrate and honor teenage girls from North Philadelphia with the creation of a collaborative portrait project. Through a series of artistic workshops on identity, racism, sexism, and the effects of poverty in their communities, the young women will create self-portraits, both visual and written, to portray themselves as leaders in their community and acknowledge the obstacles they have overcome. As a culmination of the discussions and artwork from the workshop series, Lauren will create oil portraits of each young woman. The students will write, collage, draw or paint on the same canvas to express their identities and their hopes for a more just world.
