Priya Nair
Executive Director
Priya joined Lantern in 2019 after 10 years in nonprofit management and arts administration across Edmonton and Vancouver. She leads strategy, fundraising, and community partnerships.
Our Founding Story
Started with a Borrowed Studio and an Open Door
Lantern Arts Collective was founded in 2016 by Thea Kowalski and Marcus Bellerose, two Edmonton artists who had grown frustrated watching the arts scene become more credentialed, more expensive, and less accessible to the communities they cared about.
Thea — a printmaker from the North End who had benefited from free studio access early in her career — and Marcus — a muralist and community organizer who had spent years working in Edmonton's Indigenous community sector — started with a simple idea: borrow a space, leave the door open, and see who shows up.
Their first Open Studio ran out of a borrowed church basement on 118 Avenue in February 2016. Fourteen people came the first week. Within three months, they had outgrown the space. By 2018, with support from the Edmonton Arts Council and a growing network of community donors, Lantern Arts moved into its permanent home on 109 Avenue in McCauley — a 3,500 sq ft studio that has remained open every day since.
Today, Lantern Arts serves 800+ participants annually, has commissioned 45 murals across Edmonton, and runs six core programs. Thea and Marcus remain active as artistic advisors and occasional facilitators, though day-to-day leadership has grown into a full team of staff, contractors, elders, and community volunteers.
