INSTITUTE FOR SUSTAINED CREATIVITY

Who We Are

Team:

Founder and Executive Director, Sharon Louden, is a visionary leader with decades of experience across arts sectors. She wears many interchangeable hats: artist, educator, advocate, consultant, community builder, and editor of the Living and Sustaining a Creative Life series of books. As a changemaker, Louden amplifies creative voices and advances meaningful opportunities for artists — particularly those who are underserved and underseen — across all disciplines to help sustain their creative lives.

From September 2018 to December 2022, Sharon held the position of the Artistic Director of the Chautauqua Visual Arts (CVA) at Chautauqua Institution in Western, NY. Mirroring the mission of Chautauqua Institution, Sharon was charged to grow CVA into a more diverse, intergenerational community on the national stage, leading from empathy and compassion — diverse, equitable, accessible and inclusive.

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, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Vanderbilt University, New York Academy of Art and Maryland Institute College of Art. She has served as a mentor faculty member in the MFA Fine Arts program at the School of Visual Arts since 2017.

Over the years, Louden has served on many Boards across the country, and she is currently a Board Member of the Jentel Artist Residency, Foundwork and the Audrey Flack Foundation.

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. 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, Weatherspoon Art Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among others

All of Louden’s work—no matter the form—is rooted in her active creative practice as a working artist.

For a complete bio, please visit SharonLouden.com.

Vinson Valega is Co-Founder & Managing Director of Institute for Sustained Creativity.

As a full-time freelancer and longtime resident of New York City, he has always been attracted to compelling ideas told through creative storytelling as a jazz musician, media producer, and activist.

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Economics in 1987, Vinson moved to New York to trade commodities. Quitting that job after a few years to travel around the world, he returned in the mid-90s to study jazz performance at the New School as a drummer/composer. Around that time, he also began booking live jazz ensembles for corporate and private events through his newly minted music agency, Just Jazz.

In 2003, his activism took off when he began blogging and making original jazz recordings accompanied by his own liner notes focused on social change. Then in 2009, he turned his music label, Consilience Productions, into a nonprofit that used music to increase civic engagement.

As his music career was taking off, he simultaneously began working as a project manager on large-scale public art commissions by his life-work partner - and ISC Executive Director - Sharon Louden. Since then, together they have installed more than 10 museum and permanent sculpture installations across the country.

Simultaneously, in 2014 after graduating from a video journalism program at the Columbia University School of Journalism, he founded Vinson Media Production, a video production company dedicated to telling important personal stories using moving images. In 2016 he added to his portfolio of creative skills by becoming a Squarespace specialist, designing beautiful mobile-friendly websites for creatives, non-profits, and small businesses.

Vinson now lives in Jackson Heights, Queens with Sharon. 

Board:

Advisory Board: