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art of service. She took the vows of a Hindu
nun and lived in an ashram in Colorado.
After a few years she became disenchanted
with pure giving and charity. Kyra’s work
was charitable, but it wasn’t empowering
the populations she worked with or giving
them tools to improve their own situations.
She left the ashram but didn’t immediately return to art. Kyra spent a few years
working in marketing and graphic design
and started a Fair Trade import business
with her husband. It wasn’t until her marriage and business dissolved that she returned to the art world, working through
her emotions and experiences with canvas
and paint.
As Kyra’s work gained momentum, she
knew she wanted to do things differently. She had explored the art world and the
service world extensively over the past few
decades, and she began to believe there was
a way to connect them after all.
“I’m not interested in doing what I’ve
done before,” says Kyra. “I asked myself:
how can I take everything I’ve been through
– Fine art, Fair Trade, the nonprofit world,
empowerment – and apply it to a new art
business? How does it all fit together?” For
her and many other artists, Infuse Gallery is
the answer to these questions.
Central Asia Institute and
Art as Service
her with expenses as she goes to school for
architecture. As a featured artist in Infuse
Gallery, she will donate a portion of her
profits back to CAI. This donation will help
other girls follow in her footsteps.
Fine Art and Activism
For most of her life Kyra walked the line
between activism and art, exploring both
avenues deeply without a way to merge
them together. When she was a young girl,
falling in love with the world of art, she
watched the first Earth Day celebration and
it made a lasting impression. In school she
took advanced art classes to develop her talents, and she joined student activist organizations like Amnesty International. Art and
activism continued to create a dichotomy in
her life, but she always saw them as separate.
30 | JOURNEY OF HOPE
When she graduated from college, she
was living every artist’s dream — painting
huge, abstract works for elite galleries and
private collections. Her life changed course
the day she delivered a large piece to a mansion in Colorado and hung it for the owners at the top of the home’s grand staircase.
When she finished, she thanked the owner
for the place of honor. The owner shrugged
as she told Kyra she didn’t pay attention to
the pieces because they changed out the art
every year.
“In that moment I felt like I was selling
furniture,” says Kyra. “It rang the gong inside me that what I was doing wasn’t impacting lives in any way. I walked away from
the business.”
For the next few years she studied with
an Indian Guru and fell headlong into the
Once Kyra established her plan for the
new gallery, she had to define which nonprofit organizations she wanted to support. After her work as a nun, she knew
that simply giving communities money
or supplies did not help them achieve
independence.
“It was important for me to partner with
nonprofits that worked to empower people,” says Kyra. “I wasn’t interested in just
donating money, the idea of the empowerment piece was important.”
The population she was most interested
in helping was young girls in need of education. She came across CAI years earlier,
but it didn’t occur to her to reach out at
first. One day, as she was hurriedly dusting her bookshelf, she knocked her copy
of Three Cups of Tea to the floor. It inspired
CENTRAL ASIA INSTITUTE