Lara Lepionka is an inter-disciplinary, community-based artist, and the founder and executive director of Backyard Growers, a non-profit organization founded in 2010 that provides backyard, community, and school gardens and programs with the goal of creating life-long gardeners inspired by the power of growing one’s own food. Lara and her family own the Beacon Street Farm, a micro urban farm in downtown Gloucester that serves as a model for urban farming, a site for creative production, and a launching pad for community events.
Lara has exhibited her work in numerous solo and group shows in Chicago, New York, and New England, and was an artist-in-residence at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Vermont Studio Center, Millay Colony for the Arts, Cultural Exchange Station in the Czech Republic, Manship Artists Residency + Studios, and Spazju Kreattiv in Malta in 2022. She is the co-creator of the Stone Soup Arts & Literacy Program, an interactive theater and visual arts enrichment program in the Gloucester Schools. Lara is the recipient of an Artists Fellowship Award from the Illinois Arts Council and a public art commission from the Northampton Arts Council. She is featured in the anthology The Object of Labor: Critical Perspectives on Art, Cloth, and Cultural Production published by MIT Press. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BA from Bard College.
