Lakshmi Sriraman brings to the KPAN consultancy her experiences as a performing artist (trained in the Indian classical dance form of Bharatanatyam), educator, choreographer, visual artist, jewelry maker, owner of two Kentucky-based small arts businesses (Lakshmi’s Studio and Shree School of Dance), arts advocate, management consultant and diversity-equity-inclusion (DEI) consultant. It is after a successful decade-long career as a management consultant that she turned to art as her full-time profession.
As a performing artist, Lakshmi has toured countries around the world presenting full-length solo Bharatanatyam recitals. She has won several awards for her innovative and original work including the Sangeetha Sambhrama Puraskar in Bengaluru, India. She has received the Arts Meets Activism award from the Kentucky Foundation for Women in 2010 and again in 2019, to support the creation of original new feminist works. She also received the Advancing Democracy grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women in 2019 to create and present an art program to empower teen girls of color.
As an individual performing artist and through her dance school, Lakshmi has presented several outreach performances and discussion sessions aimed at building awareness and creating inclusivity in schools and communities. A much sought-after artist to present workshops and presentations at universities and colleges, Lakshmi has trained hundreds of students in the Indian dance form of Bharatanatyam. Her students have won national and state level competitions including the coveted Young Arts Award.
Lakshmi has been a resident of Lexington for the past 17 years. During this time, she has curated, produced and presented several Indian performing arts programs. Significant among them are the three-month long diverse Indian art performances and activities that accompanied the UK Art Museum’s Indian Miniature Art Exhibit, and more recently, You, Me and Rumi, an international, multimedia, multicultural full-length collaborative performance created and presented through a grant from the Kentucky Arts Council.
Lakshmi is deeply committed to making the larger bluegrass area culturally alive and vibrant, creating an equitable and inclusive space for a diverse artscape to represent and celebrate art from all communities and countries. To this end she has served on the advisory board of the Civic Artist Residency program, a partnership between Civic Lex and the City of Lexington. She currently serves on the board of LexArts.
Lakshmi is a Kentucky Crafted artist, juried for her abstract paintings and hand-painted jewelry. She has a master’s degree in mathematics and an MBA. Lakshmi lives in Lexington with her husband, son and her Havanese pup Fibo.