Lora Beldon

Lora Beldon is an American artist, curator, and arts educator. Her primary body of work explores the culture, history, and the effect of combat PTSD on U.S. military brats. She is founder of the Military Kid Art Project (MKAP), which provides customized art programming for military children and teens. She lives and works in Richmond, Virginia. Executive Director of Brats Without Borders, to curate UNCLASSIFIED: The Military Kid Art Show, a traveling museum exhibit exploring the life of a military child through art, to educate and raise awareness of the military brat subculture and its life-long impact on an individual. The award was presented at the Pentagon by the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey.

In 2015, Beldon and Musil co-founded the BRAT Art Institute (BAI), a multidisciplinary art organization for individuals who grew up in military families. BAI's first annual Military BRAT Art Camp for military teens will be held at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia in the summer of 2016. The camp was developed and will be taught by professional artists who were also raised in military families.

The Beldon family is featured in Brats Without Borders's documentary work-in-progress, Our Own Private Battlefield, about the intergenerational effects of combat PTSD on military children, and how the father/daughter artists have used their art to help heal the wounds of the Vietnam War.

Career Beldon served as director and assistant director of 1708 Gallery, one of the oldest artist-run nonprofit galleries in the United States, from 1989-1996, and remains an emeritus member of the gallery.

Beldon was also a member of Richmond, Virginia's punk art group, Urban Artists Amalgamated. Her art has been exhibited across the United States and Europe, with several of her pieces in private, corporate, and public collections. "Objects and Obsessions", Coincidence Gallery, Richmond, VA (1999) "and the levee broke: meditations on the power of water", C3-Creative Change Center, Richmond, VA (2005) "The Vietnam War, Art Expressions, Then and Now", The Dairy Barn Cultural Art Center, Athens, OH (2000) "Mid-Atlantic", Dupont Gallery, University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, VA (1997) "Diverse Images", Galerie Conti, Bruxelles, Belgium (1995) "Choice", A.I.R. Gallery, New York, NY (1991)