In this four-part online workshop series Sharon Louden will offer visual artists strategies for building a sustainable career and creative life, especially in this ever-changing time of uncertainty. Louden will share the expertise she has gained through collaborations and conversations with gallery owners, museum professionals, critics, curators, and others in different art communities.

Louden draws on examples and models from the front lines of the visual arts landscape collected on two extensive book tours, daily conversations and interactions, as well as a long career as an educator and leader.

The workshop series is specifically designed to empower artists, demonstrate pragmatic approaches to sustaining a creative life, and grow relationships into communities. This timely workshop applies the artist’s ability to think outside the box and creatively problem-solve real world issues facing all professionals as they navigate their place in the art ecosystem.

Artists Jean Shin and Miguel Luciano will join the discussion on March 15 and 22, respectively, to share their insights.

Content will include:

• Sharing specific examples of what artists and arts professionals are doing to survive, create, and thrive
• Best practices for building a community of artists online
• Methodologies to create opportunities and work together during and post-COVID
• Questioning how to understand the ever changing “artworld” as we know it now
• How to collaborate with museums, nonprofits and other arts organizations
• Approaching arts professionals now without a referral
• Exploring what a “post-exhibition” world can look like

In addition, there will be multiple touch-points of correspondence between Sharon and participants throughout the four-week duration that will include extensive sharing of documents and answering of questions. In between these sessions, participants will have access to an online forum where they can stay in touch, share information and resources, and build community outside of the class sessions.

Workshop dates:

• Part 1: Monday, March 8, 7-8:30pm ET
• Part 2: Monday, March 15, 7-8:30pm ET
• Part 3: Monday, March 22, 7-8:30pm ET
• Part 4: Monday, March 29, 7-8:30pm ET

Additional one-on-one consultations
After the workshop series concludes, participants will be given the opportunity to sign up for an additional one-on-one consultation with Sharon Louden where she can answer questions specific to each artist’s situation. Consultations are 45-minutes long and take place by phone (or zoom if you are outside of the US). The price is $90. Sharon will make 15 or more sessions available to those who attend the workshop.

Recordings
This online workshop series will be recorded. The recordings will be shared with all registered participants after the workshop concludes, regardless of whether a participant attends the live workshop. The recordings will be available online to registrants indefinitely; they are not available for download.

Sharon Louden
Sharon Louden is an artist, educator, advocate for artists, editor of the Living and Sustaining a Creative Life series of books and the Artistic Director of the Visual Arts at Chautauqua Institution. Published in 2013, Living and Sustaining a Creative Life is now in its 7th printing, with sales in 24 countries. From 2013 until 2015, Louden traveled on a 62-stop book tour, where she met thousands of artists. Louden has continued this momentum bringing her second book, The Artist as Culture Producer on an extensive 102-stop conversation tour from 2017-2018. This book is now in its second printing and has also sold in 24 countries as well as adopted in many schools throughout the US. Her next books, Last Artist Standing and The Innovators: Defining Change in the Art World, edited with Jessica Lynne, will be published in 2020 and 2021 respectively.

Sharon is a faculty member in the MFA Fine Arts 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 Lecture Series. In addition to teaching in colleges and universities, 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.

Jean Shin
Recognized for her monumental installations, artist Jean Shin transforms large accumulations of everyday objects into expressions of identity and community engagement. Her work has been widely exhibited in over 150 major museums and cultural institutions including at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC, Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, and Storm King Art Center. Shin is a tenured adjunct professor at Pratt Institute and President of the Joan Mitchell Foundation.

Miguel Luciano
Miguel Luciano is a multimedia visual artist whose work explores themes of history, popular culture and social justice through painting, sculpture, and socially engaged public art projects. His work is featured in the permanent collections of The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Brooklyn Museum, El Museo del Barrio, the Newark Museum, and the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico. Luciano is a faculty member at Yale University School of Art and The School of Visual Arts in NY. He is currently an Artist in Residence at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in the Civic Practice Partnership Residency Program.