GARY BARTEN

Gary Barten studied art and art history at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia beginning in 1971. He dropped out in his Junior year at Tyler to study music theory and piano with May Harrow. In 1978 he returned to Tyler and completed a BFA in Painting, subsequently moving to St Louis where he completed an MFA in Painting at Washington University. While in graduate school he began working as a scenic artist at a number of professional theaters in St Louis. Moving to Chicago and then Los Angeles he continued to work as a journeyman scenic artist for theater and television.

In 1988, Gary moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and began teaching art and design courses, first at City College of SF and later at numerous other colleges in California, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. Returning to California from the East coast in 2008, he resumed teaching and working as a set designer and scenic artist in the Bay Area.

In 2016, he and Katherine moved to Eldorado in Santa Fe from Alameda, California. While he is no longer teaching, Gary is still doing set designs for theater as well as painting more than he had the opportunity to do while teaching. Somehow, music has also remained in a number of changing forms. But that’s another story.