LMNOPI is an American artist dedicated to utilizing her artistic skills as a way to amplify messages emanating from within movements for social, economic, racial and climate justice. Her primary mediums are painting and printmaking.
She has been a community organizer, humanitarian worker & civilly disobedient activist over the last three decades. Former projects include Earth First in the late 1980’s where she worked on the campaign to save Headwaters Forest in Northern California. She was the founding director of a community arts venue called What is Art? in Santa Cruz 1994-2000 serving as the curator and facilitator there until she moved to NYC on September 11th, 2001. She attended the School for Film and Television and briefly pursued a career in acting. Prior to creating the street artist persona LMNOPI in 2009, she studied oil painting & printmaking at SUNY Purchase, graduating in 2005. Initially, she embarked upon the path of entering the gallery scene, primarily as an oil painter. After a few years, however, she became disillusioned with this pursuit and decided she preferred to show her work in the streets which is accessible to everyone and she felt she could have a greater impact by showing work in the commons.
In 2010, in response to the earthquake in Haiti, she spearheaded an entirely DIY humanitarian project called Domes for Haiti where she constructed ten geodesic domes for orphans in Port Au Prince. She was an active participant during the occupation of Zuccotti Park in NYC in 2011 where she formed a working group called the Direct Action Painters whose focus was to create banners for actions. Later LMNOPi generated viral memes for the anti-fracking movement of NY. The most popular of which featured Smokey the Bear and elicited a cease and desist letter from the USDA. She successfully challenged the constitutionality of their attempt to restrict her speech and they backed down. She was one of the founders of the disaster relief effort Occupy Sandy in 2012 in NYC, which mobilized thousands of volunteers in the wake of the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. She took part in the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline by camping for two months at Standing Rock in the winter of 2016, playing a supportive role for the elders & Indigenous leaders there mainly working in California Kitchen, cooking, cleaning and helping to keep the fires going.
LMNOPI has created over 30 murals since 2009. She has painted walls in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, Vermont & Kingston, NY as well as Arizona, Colorado and California. She has published two portfolios of her print work which can be found in the special collections of universities and colleges across the United States. These include the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, the Rolvaag Library at St. Olaf University, Bertrand Library at Bucknell, Neilson Library at Smith College, Reed College Library, Bowes Library at Stanford, University of Pittsburg Library, Billings Library at University of Vermont & Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley. She is part of a historical archive of Occupy artists titled Occuprint which is in the collections of Harvard University Art Library, University of Applied Arts Vienna, Library of Congress and the Museum of Modern Art among others.
LMNOPI relocated to the Green Mountains of Vermont in the Fall of 2018 where she lives and works on her half acre homestead with her two cats.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fueled by Rage, Powered by Love / Vermont Public Radio / July 20, 2020
Art as Activism: New Vt Mural Aims to Prompt Conversations about Race / New England Cable News / NBC / July 15, 2020
Rutland Artist paints Massive Black Lives Matter Mural / Rutland Herald / July 14, 2020
The Highest Form of Spirituality. Resurgence & Ecologist Magazine / January - February 2020
Streetwise in Boulder is Practicing Social Justice through Street Art. 303 Magazine / November 6th, 2019
New mural to be dedicated Saturday at Boulder’s Dairy Arts Center. Colorado Daily News / October 10th, 2019
A Greta Thunberg Mural Is Defaced and Rebooted in Rutland. Seven Days: Vermont’s Independent Voice / October 23rd, 2019
Lmnopi on Street Art, Gentrification / Street Art NYC – March 18th, 2017
Bedford + Bowery June 1015 / Who is the Artist Behind this Haunting New Mural
Santa Cruz Sentinel 4/23/14 / Activist Lmnopi’s Rebirth as a Painter
Powderzine 3/2014 / Fuck Us, We Multiply; an Interview with Lmnopi
Village Voice 5/7/2013 / Forest Service Inflamed by Smokey the Bear
National Catholic Reporter 8/31/2010 / It’s the Heart that Makes the Ministry
Metro Santa Cruz 12/15/99 / All About What
Metro Santa Cruz 05/5/99 / 5 Artists to Watch