Hari Kirin Kaur Khalsa

Hari Kirin Kaur Khalsa is an artist and teacher dedicated to healing through yoga and art. She teaches at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, the Antrim Girls Shelter, Omega Institute for Holistic Health and venues throughout the Us and Europe. Hari Kirin is currently exhibiting an installation called Wherever You Are is the Center of the World at the Brattleboro Museum.

Hari Kirin (b. Joan Hanley in Queens, NY 1955) has been a professional artist since finishing her BFA at Hartford Art School in 1976. Her twenties were spent between NY, at the School of Visual Arts or Columbia University, and Hartford, CT, where she participated in Real Art Ways. During this time she met her spiritual mentor, Mahan Tantric, Yogi Bhajan. In 1986 she moved to Cambridge MA to pursue her interest in art, healing and spirituality. In 1988 She received an MA in Creative Arts Therapies from Lesley University. At Lesley she was deeply influenced by psychologist James Hillman and writer Thomas Moore's ideas about images. She began exploring these ideas in her painting, collaborative group performances, and therapeutic art events. In 1986 Hari Kirin completed Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training and began teaching Yoga in Cambridge MA. She returned to graduate school and received an MFA degree from Vermont College in 2001 with a focus on Public Art.

Recent Public installations include Office Hours, 360 oil paintings in the Dublin Ireland Immigration office, The Flag Project, a community expression of diversity in the State Legislature in Concord NH, Axis Mundi, a 40 day meditation with local teens on a toxic site in Wilton NH and MudMural, a collaborative organic Mural. Hari Kirin has shown her paintings in one-woman shows at The Mariposa Museum, NH and The Open Center NY and Group shows in the Attleboro Museum MA and Liberty gallery Dublin Ireland. Her work has been reviewed in CIRCA, Resurgence and Aquarian Times. Recent lectures include the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Hofstra University, and the One Earth conference. She has been a visiting professor of Contemporary Art History at Marlboro College VT, and an artist teacher for Vermont College and Maine College of Art MFA programs.

Hari Kirin lives in New Hampshire with writer Thomas Moore and their two children.

*In 2007 Hari Kirin took Sikh vows and changed her name from Joan Hanley to Hari Kirin Kaur Khalsa. To view her workshops, paintings and public art events visit www.artandyoga.com Info on her exhibition: whereveryouareisthecenteroftheworld.com