Kelly Comras, FASLA

Kelly Comras is a licensed landscape architect and a member of the State Bar of California. She merges these two disciplines in a practice that focuses on community-based open space design. In this area of her practice, Comras typically brings together stakeholders to achieve a common goal that relates to the study or use of land. Her projects encompass both public and private landscapes, and are generally community-wide in scope. Stakeholders include public parks, businesses, non-profit and charitable organizations, educational institutions, community volunteer organizations, elected officials and their constituents, public administrators (city, county, state, and national), and historical groups, who collaborate with landscape architects, architects, engineers and other professional designers.

Comras also conducts research, publishes, and lectures on topics relating to the study and analysis of cultural landscapes. She is a founding member of the Stewardship Council for The Cultural Landscape Foundation, and past-president of the California Garden & Landscape History Society. She has lectured at such institutions as Harvard Graduate School of Design, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Library of American Landscape History, UCLA, Society of Architectural Historians, California Preservation Foundation, and others. Her book about an important midcentury landscape architect, Ruth Shellhorn, was published by University of Georgia Press / Library of American Landscape History in 2016; a companion documentary was released in 2015. She regularly publishes in such journals as Landscape Architecture Magazine, View, Eden, and others.

Comras studies photography and ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging.