Artist: Sharon Louden, CV
Email: sharon.louden@gmail.com
Sharon Louden is an artist, educator, advocate, consultant, community builder, founder and director of the Institute for Sustained Creativity, and editor of the Living and Sustaining a Creative Life series of books. 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.
A visionary leader with decades of experience in academia, Louden is also a committed connector—bridging communities and catalyzing change, particularly on behalf of underserved artists within institutional structures.
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 in 2024, 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 public and private commissions across the country, including recent permanent installations made in New York City, Miami, Oklahoma City, San Francisco and Washington, DC.
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 had two solo exhibitions at signs and symbols (New York) and Engage Projects (Chicago) galleries. Upcoming exhibitions include a solo show at Tracey Morgan Gallery in Asheville, NC, and a major public art project for the Freedom Tower at Miami-Dade College, both happening this year (2025).