SHEILA CRIDER

Is a Washington-based artist specializing in mixed media works on paper, canvas and cloth. She grew up in historic Anacostia. Graduating with a University degree from UVA, she returned to Washington from Charlottesville to become active in the literary community.
Published in a number of small press journals including The Greenfield Review, she appeared in the Ascension Poetry Reading Series organized by E. Ethelbert Miller and was a founding member of Free DC The Writers’ Workshop led by AB Spellman. She wrote and produced several staged readings/performances 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). She also began researching and experimenting with the pictorial properties of poetry, publishing the essays The Use of Language as Art (1980) and Art As Language (1984).
In 1985, Sheila relocated to Bordeaux, France where her focus shifted to abstract art language. In addition to drawing and painting, she developed and marketed “The Original Response,” functional one of a kind paper objects which were exhibited in Ob’Art (the Salon for Contemporary Objects) in Paris and at American and International Crafts in New York. Returning to live in Washington in 1991, she redeveloped the product for art and crafts fairs. Exhibiting paper objects and small drawings, she participated in the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta from 1996 – 2003 and was a Sunday exhibitor at the world renowned Eastern Market in Washington from 1994 – 2004.
Sheila has been artist-in-residence at the Leighton Studios of the Banff Center in Alberta, Canada (2006), The Vermont Studio Center (2001), and Cite Internationale des Arts in 1997 and 1989. In 1999, she apprenticed for three months with Sumi-e ink master Kohei Takagaki in Aioi, Japan. She also participated in a week-long workshop learning the traditional method of paper making at the Mino Washi Paper Museum in Mino.
In 1997, 1998 and 2003, she received Small Project Grants from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. She was nominated for a Tiffany Foundation Award in 2003 and again in 2005. She has served on grant review and public art selection panels for the DC Commission on the Arts. A long time member and supporter, she is currently a member of the Artists Council for Washington Project for the Arts.
Sheila Crider lives and works in the historic Congress Heights section of Washington. Her current projects include commissions for Gould Property, Inc. and The New St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, both of Washington.

Public and Corporate Collections
Art-in-Public-Places, Washington, DC Corcoran Gallery Art, Washington, DC James E Lewis Museum, Baltimore, MD Yale University Book Collection, New Haven, CT Frank Hale Collection, Ohio State U Evans-Tibbs Collection, Washington, DC The Wilson Building Collection, Washington, DC African American Museum, Dallas, TX Ranger Italy, Serengo, Italy Mino Washi Paper Museum, Mino, Japan The Concord Condominium, Crystal City, VA Hyatt Regency Hotel Crystal City, VA The State Department Print Collection, Washington, D. C. The Library of Congress Print Collection Washington, D. C.