Laura Allinder is a professional interior designer with over 15 years of experience in Kansas City and Dallas, as well as completed projects around the world. A favorite local project was featured in Kansas City Homes & Style magazine in 2015. Artistically she is often commissioned for charcoal portraits but she enjoys a variety of subjects and media, and maintains a passion for her college major: graphic design, which she studied at the Pratt Institute in New York. Her artwork was exhibited in the group show, Bits & Pieces, at the InterUrban ArtHouse in Overland Park, and in a solo show, Time Flies, at the Kansas City Kansas Public Library. In recent years a passion for nature and gardening led to raising monarch butterflies, which now inspire much of her art and design, and she has released over 1000 butterflies back into the wild. She is passionate about pollinator awareness and is exploring ideas to develop her hobby into an educational program. During the monarch season she welcomes visitors to tour the “monarch tent” within her garden, to assist with a butterfly release, and to learn about monarch rearing. Friends, neighbors, and strangers of all ages have enjoyed the experience. Laura resides in Shawnee, Kansas, and has volunteered around the KC metro area with Harvesters, the Red Cross, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, where she served as co-chair for the 2014 Party Arty committee on the Young Friends of Art council.