Visiting Artist Lecture: Sharon Louden

Sharon Louden is an artist, educator, advocate for artists, and editor of the Living and Sustaining a Creative Life series of books, including The Artist as Culture Producer, published by Intellect Books and distributed by the University of Chicago Press.

Louden's work has been exhibited in numerous venues including the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the Drawing Center, Birmingham Museum of Art, Weatherspoon Art Museum, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Her 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, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among others. Sharon is a faculty member in the MFA program at the School of Visual Arts in New York and a senior critic at the New York Academy of Art where she organizes a popular lecture series interviewing luminaries and exceptional individuals in the art world and from afar.

Louden's first book, Living and Sustaining a Creative Life, is now in its seventh printing. With sales in more than eighteen countries, it has become Intellect Book's number one best-selling publication. The book has been translated into Korean, has garnered more than forty-five reviews, has been the subject of fifteen podcasts and radio appearances, and has received feedback from countless individuals. Her second book, The Artist as Culture Producer, was officially launched in March 2017 and is already in its second printing. Louden is in the middle of an extensive 100+ stop international conversation book tour that will conclude in 2018.  

Louden's third book, Last Artist Standing (which will focus on artists over fifty years of age), will be published in 2020. The Living and Sustaining a Creative Life series will consist of a total of ten books concentrating on all art forms edited by experts in each each field. Publication of this series will extend over ten years, concluding in 2030.