Kira Lynn Cain is an artist working where sound, image, and story dissolve into one another. Her work spans drawings, mixed media collage, picture books, poetry, and music. Drawing on traditions of conceptual art, literary nonsense, nursery rhymes, and lullabies, she invites audiences into intimate, dreamlike spaces where language loosens and listening becomes a form of seeing.
Her work has been described as a space where Yoko Ono meets Edward Gorey, and where David Lynch meets Philip Glass. Each book, song, and image is an invitation to remember the child within who could communicate with clouds and shadows, and to feel that familiar, secret inner stirring.
She has performed in museums and arts centers as well as concert halls and festivals across San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, Portland, and beyond, carrying the distinct worlds of her songs from place to place. Her drawings and words have been shown in publications and art spaces, and will soon appear in a picture book for all ages titled Tears Are Everywhere (Buckman Journal).
As a student at the San Francisco Art Institute, she experimented with Fluxus and musique concrète, and was banned for life from Alcatraz Island after a guerrilla performance in which she attempted to sing the sounds of the legendary island prison's ghosts. That same year, Sophie Calle visited her department to give a lecture, and upon graduation a friend gifted her Yoko Ono's Grapefruit; together, these events formed the armature of her worldview.
As of 2026, Cain's practice is expanding globally through forthcoming publications, releases, performances, and cross-media collaborations that reveal new ways of seeing and listening. Through her website and mailing list, she shares works-in-progress, reflections, and portals into her creative world—including limited editions and rare glimpses behind her process, as well as occasional intimate educational experiences for those who wish to go deeper.