Women's Wisdom Art

Laura Ann Walton founded The Wisdom Project in 1991 as part of Loaves and Fishes' Maryhouse program, a daytime hospitality shelter for homeless women and children. The Wisdom Project was designed as an art empowerment program for women overcoming poverty, homelessness, violence, and abuse. Thousands of women have benefited from Women's Wisdom Art (as the program is now known) since its inception.

Women's Wisdom Art operated as a program under the wing of The Sacramento Food Bank and Family Services from 2000 until 2012. Beginning in June of 2012, Women's Wisdom Art began operating as an independent non-profit corporation under the umbrella of Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission (SMAC), receiving additional small grants and depending mostly on private donors. 

Lead by the Founder and a small Board of Directors, Women's Wisdom Art became an independent 501(c)(3) in June 2015. The organization's participants currently include a diverse range of women from across a broad spectrum. They meet to write, create art, and practice yoga as a way to escape isolation, recover from illness or loss, forge new friendships, and transform their own lives and the lives of others in their families and communities.

In an exciting new model of program expansion, Women’s Wisdom Art left the Del Paso storefront in March 2025 to reduce escalating rent expenses and put more funding directly into programs. Expanding our offsite model allows us to implement wider program delivery for area nonprofits as well as free public drop-in workshops and events.  We provide free art workshops to women in North Sacramento weekly and in Rancho Cordova twice a month. Additional funding will assist us to increase the frequency of our open art workshops for women. We also provide monthly art workshops to the clients of Mercy Housing in two locations, The Grove, Sister Nora's, the North Sacramento Family Resource Center and the South Sacramento Family Resource Center.