Lily Carone
Lily Carone is a horticulturist, artist, and educator based in western Massachusetts. Her work reflects and engages with ecology, both in subject and material.
Biography
Carone’s primary practices include papermaking and photography. Her work is rooted in and inspired by her connection to place, an orientation informed by a dozen years spent working in small-scale organic agriculture and studying herbalism immersed in the landscaped and ecology of the Connecticut River valley.
After postponing undergraduate studies for a decade in order to explore and experience the world firsthand, Carone completed a BS in Ethnobotany, Herbal Medicine, and Indigenous Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Concurrently working as a Horticulturist at the Mount Holyoke College Botanic Garden laid the foundation for a pedagogy based in hands-on, experiential, and cross-disciplinary methodologies. This approach extends to Carone’s own art practice, which investigates the structure of material and matter, both built and organic, and aims to understand and perceive through the observation of patterns and metamorphoses.
Carone now works as a horticulturist and instructor at the Botanic Garden of Smith College in Northampton, MA, where she also teaches Papermaking. Her work has been exhibited in the 2019 7th Collegiate Handmade Paper Art Triennial. She was a visiting faculty member at Bennington for Fall 2023.