Sue Keown is an artist and educator whose work grows from fiber, ritual, and sustained attention. Working with stitching, bookmaking, drawing, weaving, and print-based processes, she explores grief, love, memory, and the quiet labor of care. Her practice is rooted in slowness and repetition, returning to forms over time as a way of listening, witnessing, and staying with what matters.

Influenced by spiritual reflection, the natural world, and lived experience, Keown’s work centers on intimacy. Small books, sewn structures, and tactile surfaces become spaces for pause and inward reflection, inviting viewers to consider what is carried, mended, and held rather than resolved.

Her practice is both personal and communal, shaped by teaching, collaboration, and place. Grounded in material knowledge and process, Keown’s work reflects a long-term commitment to making as an ethical and reflective act, asking how art can function as a form of care and how sustained, quiet practices can bear witness to lived experience.


SELECT JURIED SHOWS

Through An Artists Lense ArtWRKD, Newtown, PA 2025- 2026

Deep Seated curated installation ART Yard, Frenchtown, NJ 2025 - 2026

Super SIze It MFA Gallery, Frenchtown, NJ 2025

Salon Members Show New Hope Arts Center, New Hope, PA  2025

(Robin Larsen Founder’s Award for Abstraction)

AOY Member’s Show AOY Gallery, Yardley, PA 2025

Create That Tune Group Show MFA Gallery, Frenchtown, NJ 2025

A Road Less Traveled  MFA Gallery Inaugural Group Show, Frenchtown, NJ 2025

Structures and Constructions in Fiber  New Hope Arts Center, New Hope, PA  2024

River Valley Artisans Members Show Frenchtown, NJ 2024

NJ PRIDE  Union Coffee House, Lambertville, NJ 2024

New Members Show AOY Gallery, Yardley, PA  2024

Pandemic Works  The Painting Center, NY, NY  2020

Quarantine  Norwalk Transportation Authority, Norwalk, CT 2020

Progression Accessible Art Project: Solo Exhibition and Community Weaving Project Cultural Alliance of Southwestern Connecticut, Danbury, CT 2019

Go Green Mayor’s Council - Mayor’s Gallery, Bridgeport, CT 2010

RESIDENCIES

Taos Artist Residency  Arroyo Hondo, Taos, NM 2025

Estudio Corazón Residencies Ghost Ranch, Abiquiu, NM 2023 and 2024

Art Works for Youth Summer Teaching residency at the Joe Slovo Township School, Port Elizabeth, South Africa 2016

Red Truck Clay Works Apprentice, Chestertown, NY 1982

Sun Valley Center for the Arts and Humanities Year Long Ceramics Residency, Sun Valley, ID 1980


PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS

SAQA Studio Art Quilt Associates

River Valley Artisans Frenchtown, NJ

Hunterdon Art Museum Clinton, NJ

AOY Art Center Yardley, PA

Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsmen

Bucks County Artists Bucks County, PA

New Hope Arts New Hope, PA

BCIMS Buck’s County Insight Meditation Society

NAEA National Art Education Association 

NCECA National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts 


EDUCATION

Master of Arts in Art Education Goddard College, Plainfield, VT

Bachelor of Science in Human Services Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY

Fourth Year Diploma in Studio Arts School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

Select Continuing Education

  • Vipassana Retreats: Women And Meditation and Opening to Wisdom and Love retreats, Insight Meditation Society, MA

  • Mindfulness in Education Conference: Omega Institute, NY

  • Oppression and Leadership Institute: Klingenstein Center, Columbia University, NYC

  • Slow and Savor Mindfulness and Service in the Craft Arts: Paulus Berensohn, Caverly Morgan, and Joy Seidel, Penland Craft School, NC

  • Drawing Closer to Nature: Art-making and meditation with Peter London, Kripalu Center, MA

  • Hemera Foundation Fellowships: Intro to Zen and Creative Expressions retreats, Zen Mountain Monastery, NY







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