MONICA TYRAN
New Orleans, LA
2026-2027 Grant Investing in Craft: Studio Equipment Acquisition
Grant 2017-2018, 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2023-2024, 2025-2026
Monica Tyran is a screenprinter, printmaker, and arts administrator born and raised in New Orleans. Her creative practice explores how we process and reconstruct the past through visual storytelling and is grounded in the cyclic patterns of everyday life, memory, and personal history. She builds layered prints that draw on hand-drawn mark-making, photographic imagery, and stenciled forms. The everyday objects and personal artifacts that appear in her compositions are vehicles for examining how individual and collective histories live on in material things.
This grant will fund Tyran’s continued renovation of her workspace, Kind Heart Studio, supporting her goal of building a fully operational and professionally equipped printmaking studio. “My vision is to operate Kind Heart Studio as a handcraft screenprinting business printing editions for artists, designers, illustrators, and institutions. New Orleans has a thriving arts and culture community, and Kind Heart Studio extends the quality of services available, bringing a quality edition printing practice to artists, designers, and illustrators who want handmade, limited edition work,” explains Tyran, who will use the grant to purchase a new exposure unit and a water-filtration system for the studio’s washout booth. The updated exposure unit will produce more precise prints, and the filtration system will remove harmful waste solids from the screen-cleaning process. “Investing in this system is an act of stewardship: of the community, of the waterways, and of the craft,” she states.
These two investments are stepping stones toward Tyran’s dream of operating a studio that is open for collaboration. She is currently planning a print demonstration which will showcase the studio’s capabilities with fellow YAYA alumni Jourdan Barnes, Kayla Curley, and Jeremiah Brown. “This new phase is one I have been building toward for years, and I am energized by what is now possible,” says Tyran, who is grateful that a studio she originally started in her home will continue to evolve and thrive.
Monica Tyran studied screenprinting and printmaking at Penland School of Arts & Crafts and letterpress and bookmaking at San Francisco Center for the Book. Her work has been exhibited at venues including Dillard University, Louis Armstrong International Airport, the New Orleans Community Printshop, the Contemporary Arts Center, and Stella Jones Gallery. She studied at the University of Louisiana at Monroe and holds a B.A. in Visual Arts from Dillard University and an M.A. in Arts Administration from the University of New Orleans. She first joined the YAYA Guild in 2004.
All works are copyright of the artist.