LaVonna Varnado-Brown

Teaching Artist

Arijino Artistry is an artistic practice sustained by the work of LaVonna Varnado-Brown. LaVonna creates multimedia works (which include: writing, sculptural altars, painting, making in mixed media collage, acrylic) that speak from the experience of a Black mother creatively navigating the American landscape with a focus on healing and raising spatial awareness. LaVonna creates art that is AfroFuturistic in aesthetic with odes to history, the Divine Feminine, and floral daydreams abounding. Through her work she hopes to uplift the narrative of rest, joy, resistance, and love. LaVonna is grounding this multimedia work and finding inspiration in community through curating workshops and intentional space to engage in creative grounding practices that raise our spatial awareness and kinesthetic responses to one another and the environment we inhabit.

LaVonna has exhibited work at Tulane Newcomb with LaToya Ruby Frasier, at Diboll Gallery, Longue Vue House & Gardens, LeMieux Gallery, Aquarium Gallery, REACH Center Gallery, and Artist Journey Allen's studio. The latter listed shows were solo exhibitions curated by LaVonna Varnado Brown. LaVonna has had multiple residencies with Louisiana Children's Museum, Kolaj institute, Longue Vue House & Gardens, and is a 2025 alumni of the creative cohort at New Orleans Museum of Art. LaVonna's collage work  has been published in Kolaj magazine and Cut Me Up Magazine. LaVonna has been featured on WHIV, Another Gulf is Possible, on nola.com, Fox 8 WVUE, The Tribune, and Gambit.