new directions in the arts - Lafayette Magazine - Lafayette College

The bride dances barefoot in the Pacific waves. The
steam rising from the lobster bisque curls just so. The
dog grins. “I know when to shoot,” says photographer
Kira Stackhouse ’02. These are her moments.
Stackhouse chronicles life in the Bay Area—and adds spice to it—
in her businesses and blogs, including Nuena Photography (images
of people), Fetch Foto (of pets), Scutte (shirts for dogs), Fryhole
(restaurant reviews and pics for foodies), and the Little Bark Book
(her take on cool stuff for pets).
While managing her companies, making photos, recycling donated
T-shirts into canine fashions, learning to sew, helping dogs find
homes, swimming to Alcatraz Island, and participating in triathlons,
Stackhouse has added another spinning plate: working full-time in
marketing for the Sierra Club.
“I do have a lot of things in my basket right now,” she says with
a laugh. “But I’ve been a creative type my whole life.”
Before starting college, she thought she might major in the sciences.
Then, at Lafayette, “I saw all this cool art by Christo and Jeanne-
Claude. I had never had that challenge before.” She dined with the
artists, became pen pals with Jeanne-Claude, and switched her major
to art.
Inspired by meeting the installation and performance artist
Ann Hamilton during Hamilton’s Grossman Residency at the
College in 2000, Stackhouse dove into performance art herself. In
her debut at the Williams Center, she walked barefoot on a spiral of
raw eggs, wrapped in the American flag. Opening the flag to expose
her body, clad only in Saran wrap, she recited a poem about identity
and gender.
“I was really bold in college, and Lafayette has such a strong
art department,” she says. “I was given incredible opportunities.”
A vacation in San Francisco hooked her on the West Coast. But what
to do?
“Never for one second did I consider being a photographer,” she
says. Things revealed themselves when a friend asked Stackhouse
to shoot her wedding. “It was fun to take pictures. I put ads on
Craigslist and got 12 wedding bookings.”
Building Scutte (say “scoot”) consumes a lot of time right now.
The need to protect her new Boston terrier against cool seaside
nights sparked the idea.
“All the clothes in the pet stores were kind of tacky. So I went
to thrift stores, cut up shirts, and gave them to the dog,” she says.
In half a year she’s placed Scutte fashions in 10 stores, with more
coming. She donates 10 percent of the proceeds to a shelter that
finds homes for older dogs.
“I finally found something that I was really good at where I
could make money and not get bored,” she says, talking about the
photography and dog-clothing businesses. “All the hard work,
someday it will pay off.”
12 lafayette • SPRING 2010
P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y C H U C K Z O V K O