Sharon Louden

Sharon Louden wears many interchangeable hats including artist, educator, advocate for artists, consultant, community builder, editor of the Living and Sustaining a Creative Life series of books, and Executive Director of Women’s Studio Workshop.

As an artist, her work has evolved from using writing as a medium, to figuration then abstraction through her paintings and drawings, to creating many physical environments that involve an inclusive advocacy using a varied range of media.

In addition, Sharon is a visionary leader with decades of experience as an educator in academia, community connector & catalyst fighting for underrepresented artists within established institutions. She is a collaborator who convenes initiatives with siloed stakeholders across the non-profit and business sectors. All of her work is considered a creative practice under the umbrella of a working artist.

Sharon graduated with a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Yale University School of Art. Her work has been exhibited in numerous venues including the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the Drawing Center, Carnegie Mellon University, Weisman Art Museum, National Gallery of Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, Weatherspoon Art Museum and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.

Louden's work is held in major public and private collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, National Gallery of Art, Neuberger Museum of Art, Arkansas Arts Center, Yale University Art Gallery, Weatherspoon Art Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among others. Recent additions to museum collections include a painting from the “Community” series, acquired by the National Gallery of Art in 2013 and shown in a group exhibition, entitled The Interior Life: Recent Acquisitions, a drawing by the Henry Art Gallery at University of Washington in Seattle, WA, and three drawings by the University of Wyoming Art Museum in Laramie, WY.

Her work has also been written about in the New York Times, Art in America, Washington Post, Sculpture Magazine, ARTnews and the Philadelphia Inquirer, as well as other publications. She has participated in residencies at Tamarind Institute, Urban Glass, Franconia Sculpture Park, Society of the Four Arts and Art Omi. 

In addition, she continues to produce site-specific permanent pubic and private commissions across the country, including recent permanent installations made in New York City, Oklahoma City, San Francisco and Washington, DC.

For the first time in five years, Sharon showed new paintings as well as glass sculptures in a shared solo exhibition in 2021 at Engage Projects gallery in Chicago. In 2024, she has had two solo exhibitions at signs and symbols (New York) and Engage Projects (Chicago) galleries.

As a part of sustaining her creative life as a practicing, working artist, Sharon has had an entrepreneurial teaching and administrative history since 1991. Her teaching experience includes studio and professional practice classes to students of all levels in many institutions throughout the United States. Colleges and universities at which she has lectured and taught include: Moore College of Art, Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Kansas City Art Institute, College of Saint Rose, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Vanderbilt University, New York Academy of Art and Maryland Institute College of Art. Sharon’s administrative experience dates back to 1988 when she was the Registrar in non-degree programs at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has consistently assisted through committees and advisory boards contributing to academic and nonprofit institutions.

Sharon is currently a faculty member in the MFA Fine Arts program at the School of Visual Arts in New York. In addition to teaching in colleges and universities, she continues to conduct grassroots Glowtown workshops in schools and not-for-profit organizations across the country.

Louden organized a popular Lecture Series between 2009-2019 at the New York Academy of Art, interviewing luminaries and exceptional individuals in the art world and from afar. You can find many of her conversations during her lecture series here. She continued this lecture series at the Chautauqua Institution: Chautauqua Visual Arts Lecture Series, which took place weekly for 9 weeks during the Chautauqua Institution summer season.

Louden is also active on Boards and committees of various not-for-profit art organizations and volunteers her time to artists to further their careers. Sharon was a consultant for Creative Capital and has worked with grantees of the Joan Mitchell Foundation with professional guidance and development. She is also a member of the Artist Advisory board of the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation and on the Franconia Sculpture Park, Foundwork and Jentel Artist Residency Boards of Trustees.

She is also the editor of Living and Sustaining a Creative Life: Essays by 40 Working Artists published by Intellect Books and distributed by the University of Chicago Press. 

Published in October, 2013, Living and Sustaining a Creative Life is in its 7th printing. With sales in over 24 countries, it became Intellect Book's #1 best selling publication. The book has been translated into Korean and continues to be the subject of numerous podcasts, panel discussions, conversations, reviews and radio appearances. 

From 2013 until 2015, Louden went on a 62-stop book tour, where she met thousands of artists from all over the US. Louden has continued this momentum bringing her second book, The Artist as Culture Producer: Living and Sustaining a Creative Life, on an extensive 102-stop conversation/book tour which launched at the Strand Book Store in New York City in 2017 and concluded in Nottingham, UK in 2018. This book is now in its second printing, also sold in 24 countries, and adopted in many schools and libraries all over the world.

The Ford Foundation endorsed the The Artist as Culture Producer Conversation Tour with fiscal support for events that cross-pollinated book contributors with local artists in communities who wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity to participate.

The combined total of stops from both conversation tours over the course of five years was 164, meeting over 11,000 people, in open town-hall forums, asking artists what their needs and wants were. Many of the responses are shared on the LiveSustain.org website. Sharon Louden and artist Jennifer Dalton collaborated and created an exhibition centered around the many voices of artists expressing their needs and wants on the tours at the Berea Arts Council hosted by the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation in 2018.

Sharon’s next much anticipated book, Last Artist Standing: Living and Sustaining a Creative Life over 50, will be published in early 2025. A tour for “Last Artist Standing” will begin January, 2025. In addition, Louden is the Senior Editor of a series of 10 books released over 10 years which started in 2022 with the release of Storytellers of Art Histories. The next book to be released will be Living and Sustaining a Creative Life: Writing, to be published in 2025.

From 2017-2018, Louden was the recipient of the The Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program award of a yearlong rent-free studio space in DUMBO, Brooklyn. She shared her studio through the year by welcoming other artists to come in and draw with her as well as created her first collaborative installation with fellow artist, writer and curator, Hrag Vartanian.  Sharon currently has a studio as a part of Two Trees' Cultural Space Subsidy Program in DUMBO, Brooklyn, NY.

In 2019, Louden was the Keynote Speaker for the SECAC Conference in Chattanooga, TN and in 2021, the moderator of the Keynote Panel of the National Council of Arts Administrators Conference in Sarasota, FL. In 2022, Sharon gave the Keynote speech for the 2022 SculptureX Symposium and in 2023, she addressed District Creative Leaders at the Colorado Creative Industries Summit in Crested Butte, Colorado.

Sharon continues to tour the country to visit and work with students, faculty and administrators at academic institutions both virtually and in-person such as Ball State University, Boise State University, Syracuse University, Ringling College of Art and Design, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia College Chicago and many more.

From September 2018 to December 2022, Sharon held the position of the Artistic Director of the Chautauqua Visual Arts at Chautauqua Institution. Since its inception in 1909, the Chautauqua Visual Arts (CVA) has been a cornerstone of sharing culture nationally through its thought leaders and mentorship. Mirroring the mission of Chautauqua Institution, Sharon was charged to grow CVA into more of a diverse, intergenerational community on a national stage, leading from empathy and compassion; diverse, equitable, accessible and inclusive.

Currently, Sharon Louden is the Founder and Director of the Institute for Sustained Creativity while also continuing her artistic practice, teaching MFA students at the School of Visual Arts and working with many nonprofit organizations, academic institutions and individual artists around the world.

Sharon lives in Queens and works in DUMBO, Brooklyn, NY. For more information about Sharon’s books please visit livesustain.org.

This page was last updated in July, 2024.