Sheila Crider

Sheila Crider is an independent artist with work in many public and private collections including Art-in-Public-Places (WDC), James E Lewis Museum (Baltimore), Yale University Book Collection, State Department Print Collection, African American Museum (Dallas), Ranger Italy (Italy), Mino Washi Paper Museum (Japan), Hyatt Regency Hotel (Crystal City, VA) and the Library of Congress Print Collection.

Graduating from UVA in 1975, Sheila started writing and was a founding member of Free DC: The Writers’ Workshop led by AB Spellman. Working as an artist’s model, she began researching and experimenting with language in 1980, publishing The Use of Language as Art and Art as Language in 1984. Published in several small press journals, she also wrote and produced staged readings including Soliloquy by the Bona Fide Adam’s Rib-type Woman, Eve (1982); shi & him (with Samuel Johnson, 1985);

Learning, The Hard Way (1989) and The Adventures of Ms. Mondiale (1992).

From 1985 - 1991, Sheila lived in Bordeaux, France where her focus shifted to visual abstract art language. In 1999, she apprenticed for three months with Sumi-e ink master Kohei Takagaki in Aioi, Japan. She participated in a week-long workshop learning traditional paper making at the Mino Washi Paper Museum in Mino. She has been artist-in-residence in Paducah, KY, at the Stone Quarry Hill Art Park in Cazenovia, NY, Leighton Studios at the Banff Center in Alberta, Canada, The Vermont Studio Center, and Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris. In 2022, she relocated her practice from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore, Maryland.