Karen Billard is a designer and artist who works in a variety of media to express her creativity. She has recently formed Kusala Design, through which she designs jewelry and tassels, costumes for theater productions, and websites and graphics. She is also committed to forwarding the central role the arts play in the quality of community and personal life.
Karen brings a broad range of skill and experience to her creative work. She combines her beadwork with hand weaving, kumihimo braiding, polymer and precious metal clays to create unique jewelry and tassels.
She is currently working with the Cotuit Center for the Arts to design costumes for their current production, Sullivan & Gilbert, and is looking forward to designing costumes for 1776 in the fall of 2008. She recently collaborated with Karen Dowcett and Claude Danner on costumes and was stage manager for their production of Missa Gaia with the Chatham Chorale and Grammy award-winning composer Paul Halley.
In addition to costume work for The Living Arts Institute, she expresses her creativity through design of their logos, business collateral, and their website. She designs invitations, posters and other marketing collateral for the Falmouth Historical Society’s Jazz in the Garden summer fundraiser. Previously, she interned with the Edward Gorey House, producing marketing collateral for their annual auction. She ran her own web and graphic design consultancy, Metamorphosis Web Design for over five years, designing web sites, logos and other business and marketing collateral for a variety of small businesses and non-profits.
Karen has devoted her time over the last year and a half to helping forward the work of The Living Arts Institute. LAI was founded by Karen Dowcett and achieved non-profit status in May of 2006. The mission of this forward-thinking organization is to support individual and community health through connection and creative engagement.
Karen is trained as a Patternmaker, and worked in the fashion industry in New York. She has designed special occasion dress wear, and costumes for several amateur productions. She also holds a Bachelors degree in Special Education from Brooklyn College and post-graduate credits from NYU in Deafness Education. As a fiber artist and portrait artist, Karen has exhibited and sold her work in galleries and decorator showcases in Westchester County in New York. She is a former member and Vice President of programming for the Handweaver’s Guild of Westchester, and has taught classes in tassel making and beadwork.
