We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Genevieve Barbee-Turner a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Genevieve, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Was there an experience or lesson you learned at a previous job that’s benefited your career afterwards?

Every single job that I have had was essential to starting my own business as a creative person. As a check out girl at the Golden Corral at 15 years old I was given the task of upselling to people who are there to purchase the cheapest meal possible: an all you can eat buffet. Every time though, I outsold my friend on the other register. Side orders of shrimp, liter sized to-go cups (“Unlimited refills!), and countless other things that people didn’t think they wanted when they came in. As a creative, you are ALWAYS having to explain your work and in some instances, defend its existence.

Customer service in the food industry lead me to becoming an administrative assistant at a human services organization which made me both a gatekeeper and a networker. When the bookkeeper quit at that org, I learned how to keep the books and how the budget at that non-profit worked. I was there during regular audits and understood quickly the importance of keeping the records in tip top shape.

After that, I became a community organizer and worked on a few different community research projects and also managed a food pantry. These experiences opened up my world in so many ways and made me who I am today. Meeting people on their worst day and helping them get what they needed but keeping their dignity intact, it’s an invaluable experience. By then I was also a manager and writing grants for various other programs.

By the time I left that organization I had a crash course in running a non-profit from the inside out. I jumped into academic publishing which taught me a ton about working with the Adobe Creative suite. From there I jumped to marketing and communications for another non-profit. By the time I was 30 I made the jump to do my own thing.

My first tarot deck was about Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh I learned from working with people experiencing homelessness and living with persistent mental illness at my first organization. Everything, all the book keeping, the grant writing, the organizing, the technical knowledge—just being adaptable and flowing form one job to the next is what go me to whereI am today.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Killerpancake Illustration is Genevieve Barbee-Turner, a tarot card illustrator and two-dimensional artist based in Pittsburgh, PA. She is creating cursed occult wares including tarot decks, stickers and stationary, fine art prints, and other decor inspired by horror stories, folklore, and ghost stories from across history and pop culture. Killerpancake blends contemporary Appalachia and queer/femme identity with a splash of gothic aesthetic.

Genevieve’s pen name, Killerpancake, is an ode to hours of listening to audiobooks while drawing as a young girl. A reference to a cozy mystery book title, listening to a story has always painted pictures inside her head in a way that nothing else does. In 2012, she started recording a podcast called The AP Collection, where she interviewed approximately 200 people about Pittsburgh and creativity. These conversations inspired a fully illustrated 78-card tarot deck detailing the realities of “New Pittsburgh” called Bridge Witches: A Tarot Deck.

A tarot deck is a collection of individual stories that come together to form creative narratives. In the cards she illustrates, Genevieve combines a love of portraiture and storytelling—exploring how we talk about ourselves and the symbols we use to communicate our values. A tarot deck is both a communication tool and an illustrated universe that fits into a pocket. Since creating Bridge Witches in 2016, she has built several other decks exploring mental health, queer identity, imposter syndrome, and income inequality—topics that are normally not explored in the tarot format.

Genevieve also has a niche portrait business transforming people into any monster they desire.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

The public library. You can access SO MANY things for zero dollars at the library. One of the coolest is to access LinkedIn Learning for free which is pricy.

The other thing is if you want to do something, make a project to make you learning how to do it. Waiting around to start gets you NO WHERE. Once I figured that out it was a game changer.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

This sounds negative but it’s not: No one is waiting for me to do anything. That releases the pressure to be perfect but also inspires me to do the distance and be as creative and wild as possible. I can always reign it in later but in the beginning of a project, I have learned to spread out and dream super big.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://killerpancakeillustration.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/killerpancake_illustration/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@killerpancake_tarot

Image Credits
Killerpancake Illustration