Baltimore Artist Dedicates Herself to Family, Nature, and Social Responsibility

Kacey Stafford is an independent, mixed media artist in Baltimore, creating beautiful patterned paintings filled with color and texture. Her one-woman art business, Found Studio, offers her own hand collaged paintings featuring uplifting sayings, botanical and animal imagery, and Maryland themes. She manages an aesthetic that could fit in at Anthropologie, as well as it could a pop-art exhibit, or child’s playroom.

Stafford will be selling her work this weekend at the annual Holiday Heap craft fair put on by Charm City Craft Mafia. Stafford is the former president and a current board member in the group, and has worked countless volunteer hours over the years to ensure the show goes on.

She sells at craft fairs all over the area, shops in Baltimore, and on her website. She also teaches private lessons on her own collage and painting techniques.

Originally from Western Kentucky, Stafford learned about entrepreneurship from her grandfather’s plant nursery. “I loved watching the process of growth from seed to sprout,” she says, “To this day, the smell of mulch can transport me back to my childhood and that nursery. You’ll find many of my paintings incorporate botanical and agricultural imagery that draws on these memories.” She also picked up an appreciation for sewing and quilting from her female relatives, and incorporates repurposed fabric into her work as a nod to them – a testament to Stafford’s deep family ties, and her environmental conscience.

After teaching art in public schools for almost a decade, Stafford moved to Baltimore with her husband and a group of friends to co-found Red Tree (now called Trohv), a successful home and gift shop in Hampden. She later sold her share of the company back to her co-owner, to focus on her own work. She started Found Studio in 2009, and still sells her work in the shop, as well as at Becket Hitch in Green Spring Station.

Family and social responsibility are top priorities, and she works from a home studio in Hamilton, while raising two rambunctious children. She uses her business, not just to have a flexible schedule to be around her family, but also to cultivate ways to personally give back.

She recently came up with a design called “BMORE KIND” which she sells as paintings and prints, and gives 20% of the proceeds to Baltimore based charities. Affordable, original art you can feel good about. What a perfect Christmas gift!

Kacey Stafford’s work can be found online at foundstudioart.com. Holiday Heap craft fair will be held Saturday, December 10 from 10-5pm at 2640 St. Paul Street, in Charles Village. For more info, visit charmcitycraftmafia.com.