My Story

I grew up in the 90s in a tucked away part of Edgewater, MD with my parents and three rowdy younger brothers. It was a joy watching the property where we lived transform over the years from a plain fixer-upper into a salvaging, bargain-hunting couples’ eclectic homestead. Summers were spent in our grandparents’ pool with seven younger cousins, and snow days, which were frequent back then, were spent sledding with friends down our spectacular hill well into the night. There was no bad time of year for a campfire, tractor ride, admiring our barn cats and kittens, feeding snacks to our goats, biking all around the yard, or building a fort in the woods. Early morning crabbing and campouts with best friends were always a treat. We took regular walks on a nearby old gravel road where we’d pick wineberries or simply take in the scenery on our way down to the river to skip stones. Every Saturday was spent yard sale-ing, Thursday evenings were spent at the auction, and our house began to look more and more like an antique shop. There was always music playing – big band, funk, blues, rock, country, bluegrass, German polkas, alternative, the musical stylings of my brothers over the years – a little of everything, really. Every Christmas was eerily magical, our Halloweens were absolutely terrifying, and everything could be made photo-worthy when captured from just the right angle, in just the right lighting, with just the right backdrop, and with the most unforced forced candid poses little humans could muster.

My whole family was artful, everyone dabbling in their creative pursuits of the moment and inadvertently inspiring one another. My name was Sarah Lauren Kramer growing up. I was a mini-mom, honor roll student, and painfully shy kid. I thrived in all of my art classes in school but, as I got older, the realist in me (and even more so in my parents) dismissed the notion of art as a viable career path. After completing my associate’s degree at Anne Arundel Community College, I transferred to St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and when it finally came time for me to declare a major, fortunately, my more romantic side took over and I selected Art & Art History …with, of course, a minor in the more practical Educational Studies.

So, I dove in deep with my artmaking during what was called the St. Mary’s Project (SMP) and with the skillful guidance and rigorous expectations of my mentor professors that year, made great strides in figuring out with whom in the art world I seemed to share some sort of kinship. Salvador Dali had been my first and long-time favorite, but there was also Carravagio, J.M.W. Turner, Renoir, Odilon Redon, Jackson Pollock, Jenny Saville, Janine Antoni, Cecily Brown, Uta Barth, and the list goes on. I hung my work in a group show at the college and read my artist manifesto for the audience in May of 2009, after which there was a Q&A session where one question in particular stood out to me: “Why don’t you sign your work?” I went ahead and offered a lame attempt at an answer but ultimately ended with, “I don’t know.” Then, I breathed a celebratory sigh of relief, ate a nice dinner out with my family, and took a big step away from my artmaking, indefinitely.

My husband-to-be, supportive, handy, meticulous and not afraid of a challenge, bought us a sweet fixer upper on 6 acres so I could return for a final year at St. Mary’s College. I completed the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program and became a certified prek-12 art teacher. I taught for three years at North Point High School in Waldorf, MD, starting out as Miss Kramer and soon becoming Mrs. Sarah Kramer Dohne. When my first baby arrived in late 2013, I made the decision to leave my teaching position and stay home to care for my growing family which, less than four years later, was comprised of my husband, three daughters, and father-in-law.

When I returned to art in 2018, it was a much-needed reprieve. I gravitated first toward encaustic mixed media, and later, to stained glass. As I was developing my skills in these media, my children were growing, the intensity of some familial strife was ebbing, flowing and eventually waned, and I found that I was able to begin really carving out time to explore who I was in this very new season of my life. It was a time of tremendous healing and growth as I began volunteering, first at a community garden, then with a Tibetan Buddhist Center where I practiced meditation regularly, and finally with a Christian fitness ministry. The experience I gained through my volunteer work prepared me abundantly for becoming the arts administrator and first paid employee of the local nonprofit art studio, Arts Lab of South County. There, I worked for two and a half years developing innumerable event planning, administrative, and marketing skills, and befriending many of the local artists. In each of these organizations, I had the privilege of working closely with some inspiring and incredibly ambitious people who not only were following their hearts to give back to their community, but who ended up having a tremendous impact on my own personal journey.

It was during this time of significant spiritual growth that I began to feel a calling to create a business for my own art. My three daughters were all showing signs of interest and great talent in the arts and I was feeling very much at a loss for how to support them further as a person who never really took her own artistic potential very seriously. As a strategy to force myself to take it seriously, I decided to name my business as though I was naming a child, and selected two names: Lilith and Alasdair. After further consideration of things like making the name one-of-kind and making it easier to say, I generated a mashup of the names. To my surprise, it included my initials in the center and did so with a particular arrangement of lower and uppercase letters that captured visually and very strikingly the imbalanced smallness I felt. In that moment, it occurred to me that whether I liked it or not, this may not just be the name of my business; Lilis K’Dair might actually be my artist name.

Engaging with art has always called forth my most courageous, calm, and playful self simultaneously. It has made me feel vibrantly alive. Because my artwork seemed, and still does, always to come from a place so much bolder and more expansive than the shy, awkward, pleasing girl I was in my daily life growing up, it felt like lying or stealing to scrawl my name on it. Adding the date was like reducing it to a school classwork assignment. So, I stopped signing altogether. But as I looked at this new name in front of me, averse as I was to something so audacious as taking on a pseudonym, I tried it out anyway. I signed all but one of my pieces in the Restraint series, “Lilis K’Dair,” and for the first time, signing my name felt good.

Lilis K’Dair is me. Just me. And even bigger than me. It honors that quality many artists possess of reaching beyond their daily lived experiences and tapping into the universal and the divine. More specifically, though (as I am frequently asked what it means), the name Lilis K’Dair is an aspirational name that, on a very personal level, softens the dichotomy between good and evil. Literally referring all at once to several different, even opposing, meanings – from the gruesome image of the seductive, baby-eating demon of the night, unknown, misunderstood Lilith; to an image of someone rolling up their sleeves or hoisting the hem of their dress with the intent of working more efficiently; as well as to imagery of a savior of man, lilies, purity, and being devoted to God – this name is meant to be a reminder of the nuanced relationship between what is good and what is bad. Largely defined by context and interpretation, the potential for both is in each of us all the time. Every moment is a choice. Lilis K’Dair commemorates a dramatic shift in self-perception, as well as a newfound freedom and clarity around life endeavours.

I have found that it is most convenient to introduce myself as Sarah-Lilis, as it dramatically reduces confusion around my name. But for those who want to really call forth the artist in me, I am Lilis (pronounced Lih-Lees), and my long-awaited family business is Spirited Art & Design.