Paper Monuments combines public education and collaborative design to expand our collective understanding of New Orleans.
Lydia Stein
Lydia started organizing and painting community murals in her hometown, Worcester, MA, right after high school, completing ten murals in five years. She then joined the world-renowned Bread and Puppet Theater as a full-time puppeteer, spending summers performing on the farm in northeast Vermont, and spending the rest of the year touring the world performing revolutionary puppet shows. Later she organized activist street band festivals and temporary murals on blighted homes in Providence, RI, always maintaining the philosophy that art should be a part of everyday life for everyone, and that art can be a force for peace, justice, and equality. Now she lives in New Orleans with her husband, dog, and three cats. She has renovated two blighted houses in the 9th Ward. She still makes paintings and prints, and she recently produced and starred in a puppet-and-mask show based on the short story "Cockroaches" by Bruno Schulz. She plays euphonium and sings in the six-piece radical chamber folk band The Salt Wives.
