Maria Lanas
Artist, Founder, "Projekt Postcard"
Founding Director, "Space for Art"
Maria is an artist, & for the past twenty years has also worked as an executive within the Telecom Industry.
She earned a BFA from the Corcoran School of Art & Design. As an artist, her work has exhibited in group shows & solo exhibits around the world. She is the founder of a global art & culture initiative called Projekt Postcard. The project's mission is to expand children's vision beyond the limits of their own cultural boundaries & to promote unity through art. In 2016, Projekt Postcard's "One World" installation at Dulles airport caught the attention of astronaut Nicole Stott.
After their initial meeting, Maria & Nicole began to work together & created the "Postcards to Space" Project, which resulted in a collection of over 1000 children's space-themed art on postcards from nine countries, which were collected & displayed in an electronic art piece, brought to life by our partners at ABlok Interactive Experiences, that was projected inside the International Space Station. The "Postcards to Space" project was followed by two more space-inspired art and healing projects, "Earthrise" & "Sky|Space."
As a founding director of the Space for Art Foundation, Maria has taken an active role in the development of all projects & the organization, & has helped expand the foundation's outreach by introduction to hospitals, refugee centers & schools in the US, Latin America, & Europe.
During the implementation of these projects, Maria created & taught space-inspired art and healing workshops in hospitals, schools, & refugee organizations, locally & abroad.
For the "Earthrise" project, Maria created a 30' long art installation with 250 Earthrise drawings from children around the world - which was an installation created for one night to showcase the kid's artwork at the Apollo 8 50th anniversary celebration at the Kennedy Space Center, FL.
