HI!

I'm Lyra, and I make improbable ideas into realities — crafting with my own hands, and creating empowering containers for others.

I believe in stewardship, connection, serendipity, and lowering barriers to empathy. Worlds with consequences are ones in which our actions matter. I tell that story, over and over again, in every medium and language.

Using rigorous engineering, research, and tactics; let's construct impossible worlds and unique experiences.

Sonic Sphere at Dusk @ Burning Man by Stephane Lee

Lower the barrier to empathy...

Across mediums, industries, and countries, my art is guided by the goal of creating elevating, immersive, serendipitous experiences. I love stacking the deck of positive externalities to create unimagined possibilities, and the greatest reward is to hear what I've inspired years after the fact.

I strive to live as art.

Back home

Shopping's hard, let's do math...

Starting with K’nex, Lego Mindstorms, and any structural material in the house, my latent mechanical abilities were honed at MIT before moving to San Francisco. Here I’ve worked in such diverse fields as clean energy, aerospace, consumer electronics, and giant, piloted mechs. I specialize in going from 0-80% in record time and love solving hard problems quickly.

Mechanical Design — Live Load Rigging — Technical Writing

Make the improbable...

With a technical background and strategic mentality, I lead from within and amplify teams. I love to liaise between groups with competing interests to find optimal solutions, and specialize in advocating for the user’s experience by finding third options to get around difficult trade-offs.

From websites (like this one!) to escape rooms to immersive, site-specific events, I am preoccupied by creating experiences designed to lead audiences intentionally. A devotee of Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things, I believe in taking responsibility for the choices of those interacting with my work. I specialize in creating safer ways to experience risk, whether physical (like a roller coaster) or emotional (like a video game).

Product Management — Event Production — Game Design — Safety Design

Let's tell some stories...

Years of dance took flight when I ran away and joined the circus. Specializing in aerial straps and handbalancing, I’m a principal member of The Hypothetical Circus, and have performed across the states and internationally since 2014. Since then, I've added immersive and voice acting to my credits to enable telling sincere, intimate stories.

Circus — Dance — Singing — Interactive Acting — Voice Acting — Modeling

Lyra as Nike on an aerial hoop, by RJ Muna

Rolling up my sleeves and getting my hands dirty...

From stories-high climbable structures to the second-largest solid-state Tesla coil in the world, I love creating things that didn’t previously exist. Often my mechanical engineering background comes into play, but I’m just as happy picking up new crafts on the fly in order to work with photoshop, soft goods, electronics, or paint.

Machining — Rapid Fabrication — Costuming — Photoshop — &More

A tensegity tea lounge, perched on a bus. Photo by Peter Eckersley