Landlady Serina Hearn
Serina Hearn is passionate about history, art, family and gardening. She founded Rainbow Works in 1999, using the name her 9 year old daughter coined, with the intention of preserving the ways artists and craftsmen designed and manifested their vision when building the town of Lawrence in 1854.
When Serina moved to Lawrence in 1995 with her husband and 2 small daughters, she was fascinated with the many unique Victorians built, in the middle of the prairie, to create a town reminiscent of the East Coast and Europe.
Serina’s background is in art and fashion. She attended St. Martin’s School of Art in London, after which she started her fashion business, Serina Hearn Designs, making Haute Couture gowns. When she arrived in Lawrence, she wanted to get back into being creative, and her love of Lawrence’s iconic Victorian Homes lead her to dedicate herself to the restoration of over 20 turn of the century houses.
She sees the continued use of these beautiful homes, lived in as they have been by KU students for generations, as a significant contribution to historic preservation of KU and Lawrence’ uniqueness. She has twice been featured on Home and Away for her impressive Before and After renovations, and is currently the President of the Oread Neighborhood Association, and organisation which is dedicated to preserving its unique qualities to benefit all residents of the neighborhood.
She started a Bed and Breakfast in 2010 called the Runaway Pony which ran until 2015, when she sold it to a family in order to have more time for her tenants and family.
Additionally, Serina is a published poet of two books: Dreaming the Bronze Girl (2002) and Atlas of Our Birth (2010).
News Articles:
