Nominated by AED-Cultural Arts
Sushmita Mazumdar is an artist, writer, educator, and founder of Studio PAUSE, a space where all people are invited to make time to explore creativity and celebrate community.
For the past 10 years, her work has encouraged children, families, and older adults to share their stories of home, heritage, and migration through the creation of book arts such as her handmade storybooks. Inspired by her father, a skilled storyteller, and her mother, a biographer, Mazumdar seeks to explore how we can change community by sharing stories through the medium of art.
Mazumdar has taught book arts and story writing in schools, museums, and art centers to encourage storytelling as a means of passing on cultural heritage from one generation to the next, and she has exhibited her art in several museums in the region.
In 2018, Mazumdar was awarded an Annual Women of Vision Award by Arlington’s Commission on the Status of Women. In 2019, she was appointed commissioner for the Virginia Commission for the Arts, representing the 8th Congressional district of Virginia.