Lily Kaloustian

Lily Kaloustian was born in New Olreans but moved because of Katrina and spent her childhood years in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She grew up in an art gallery on Canyon Road and started painting around the age of 7, marketing her watercolors for a dollar on the road during gallery openings.

When she moved back to New Orleans in 2016, when she was 12, she continued painting with oils and being involved in her parents gallery in the French Quarter, selling work in the gallery and busking outside during festivals in the quarter. Lily joined YAYA just before high school and started blowing glass there, and she continued with art at Willow High School as apart of the Certifacte of Artistry Visual Arts focus. She stopped with YAYA after Covid, but continued with art at school. She did a solo show her senior year involving paintings and an immersive sculpture exhibit in its own room.

After high school Lily moved to New York and continued her art education at the Art Students League. Lily started photography in NYC, inspired by people watching in the city and her partner, a documentary photographer himself. She lived in NYC for a year before deciding to spend two months driving the west coast as a nature reprieve and self-funded artist residency. She then moved back to New Orleans for the time being. Back home and after being out west for the basically the first time since she moved from New Mexico, she found herself looking back at her roots and has been inspired by the harshly different aesthetics of the last three places she’s lived. Going back to watercolors and glass blowing she’s been inspired by new colors, shapes, styles of art, and memories from her life.