Join us in Celebrating Columbia Pike!

Sushmita Mazumdar, is an Arlington-based artist, writer, and educator. In 2007 she launched Handmade Storybooks, her unique handmade books through which she tells stories from her childhood growing up in India and also stories of migration and home. She teaches art education programs for children, families, and seniors to encourage storytelling and passing on cultural heritage from one generation to the next. She has designed and taught programs for the Smithsonian, DC Public Libraries, and in schools and art centers. She was featured at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2010 in Washington DC where she participated in the Asian Pacific American Program, Local Lives Global Ties. She had her first solo show of her books, writing, and art at the Popcorn Gallery at Glen Echo Park in Nov 2012.

Sushmita is also the owner of Studio Pause, her artist’s studio which she opened in 2013. Its where she invites the community to make time to explore creativity and celebrate community. It’s a space where diverse everyday people mix and collaborate with an artist to explore what happens when we are creative and how we can learn about our community together. Sushmita received the Woman of Vision award from Arlington County in 2018. In 2019 Sushmita was appointed commissioner for the Virginia Commission for the Arts, representing the 8th Congressional district of VA.

After receiving a Bachelor’s in Applied Arts from Bombay University (India), Sushmita worked as an art director in the advertising industry in Mumbai for 10 years. In 1999, she moved to the US and apart from doing design work, trained to be a docent with the Smithsonian’s Freer & Sackler Galleries of Art (National Museum of Asian Art) in Washington DC, where she gives tours till today. Sushmita is interested in collecting and hearing people’s stories, an interest sparked in her by her father, a wonderful storyteller, and her mother, a biographer. Today she is curious to see how we can change the community when we learn and teach others to share their stories through art. She lives in Arlington with her son, daughter, and husband.