We were lucky to catch up with Whitney Sherman recently and have shared our conversation below.

Whitney, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

My parents were not professionally creative. My father was an electrical engineer at AT&T for 37 years and my mother was a “Housewife” [what a dreadfully cloistered sounding term that is!]. Both of them loved the magic of children and gave us a home where we felt safe and comfortable. My father loved to take us on drives at night down certain streets in late fall when the tree leaves were falling. He’d turn off the car lights and be spooky. The performance was thrilling and sparked our imagination. Together they would create a haunted house at Halloween for the kids in the neighborhood that included slimy guts [cold spaghetti] in a pumpkin that we’d pass around blindfolded or hide under the draped kitchen counter and catch your pants leg suddenly with a vacuum cleaner hose. My mother sewed and so we had great homemade Halloween costumes each year. On rainy days, they would have a treasure hunt. Little notes with drawn pictures showed where the next clue was. We’d go until we found our treasure which was usually a piece of candy…nothing huge, it was the hunt and the possibility of finding yours first that was the prize! We always had a sandbox, crayons and a sense that we could make things ourselves. My mother wasnlt a great cookk, but she was really good at baking. She made gingerbread houses for each of us. We’d decorate them and take them to school. Having a corporate job, My father always talked about being self sufficient and working for yourself which he did after he retired. So with all of this imagination at work, playfulness and craft centered in our lives and this idea that one could work for oneself, I think they fostered a type of independence and confidence that let us pursue livelihoods that suited our native skills.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Over the years as a creative I’ve added more and more places where I express my ideas. Originally trained as a photographer, I realized early on that photography was going to be a personal pursuit not a business for me. I was self-trained in design having numerous friends that I learned from and a strong interest in design that made learning that discipline interesting. This is the first discipline where I held a position, first as a designer, then as a Vice-President and Creative Director at a boutique design firm [small with notable clients]. I’ve always drawn and so during my time in that job, I began getting illustration assignments, first from fellow designers that couldn’t draw, then from new clients. I tried every type of illlustration that existed at that time and discovered I was suited for editorial work and that I was good at illustrating difficult topics that were challenging to others including abstract topics like real estate or psychological topics where the image needed to avoid predictable solutions. After about 8 years of of doing the design day job and illustrating at night, I resigned from the design job to illustrate full-time. By then I was getting clients all over the US and Canada. I loved working in my dining room turned studio. It allowed me to fit my work schedule to my time needed to manage things for my home, myself and my young daughter. Once she was older I had a bit more time to think about what else I might do. This is where teaching entered, first with doing workshops. They are limited commitments and you can experience what it’s like to convert your skills and knowledge into something transferrable to students. I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did! Soon workshops turned into individual classes and after a time, I was recruited to be the Chair of Illustration at MICA. Balancing full-time teaching and an illustration studio is tricky. Deadlines, especially in editorial, are mostly unbending which resulted in many long nights finishing assignments. After a few decades of illustrating, I started feeling like I was doing the same work over and over then started looking for something new to spark my interest. That’s when I discovered ceramics. I’d been on an artist residency in the Breton area of France and visited the Quimper factory where the ceramic wares are unique to traditional colors and costumery of Brittany. I’d kept a sketchbook during my time there and was fascinated with the starched coif [like a stove pipe] that was part of their traditional attire. My sketchbook reflected this with comic imagery where the coif was super tall and either behaved like a dogs tail [drooping or wagging] or was too big for the space. These sketches were transferred to bowls, plates and mugs in a series I called Remembering Rochefort after the town I stayed in called Rochefort-en-terre. The st of about 20 pieces all sold which was a message to me that I could not only enjoy this new direction, but make a small business from it. I still illustrate but now it is almost exclusively for my ceramic products. I’ve also expanded the materials to include clote and paper products using the same imagery. Since I have a job as an educator, I don’t worry about whether anyone will like what I do and then buy it, but luckily people do buy it! My brand really originates from my love of history and culture and that is reflected in the name Pbody which is a shortening of one ancestors last name. I really enjoy discovering material culture in books, from mudlarking videos and from architectural details like carved doors. Nature is also inspiring to me as design elements and textures. My illustration work is in many private collections as well as at the Library of Congress Prints and Photography Collection. My ceramics pieces are all in private collections.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Every once in a while society gets it right and values right-brainers, but mostly we have to navigate a world that believes science and math are supreme. These are important studies that advance civilization, yet so do all creative pursuits. This isn’t about making “pretty pictures”, rather it is valuing creative, non-linear and intuitive thinking as a part equal to left brain thinking. books, musical scores, architectural design, plays, fashion, 2D and 3D art, all forms of expression are essential to everyone, even if they don’t realize it. Creative studies often get cut because they are considered non-essential which is truly sad. Artists have to be brave to weather thiese opinions and the environment of under-appreciation. The National Endowment for the Arts was only started in 1965 yet its formation was a demonstration that people recognized that art in society was essential to consider ourselves cultured. Many foundations and programs have followed in supporting the arts, some at a local level which leads to exposure of practitioners who may not be seen otherwise. Awareness has to be built and maintained in the general public for support and appreciation to follow. Some people don’t like federal money going to support artworks they don’t like, yet the amount of money spent on other efforts, like suppression of people’s right far out weighs the cost of an artwork you don’t particularly like. If the valuation of art were in equity with that of other disciplines, that would shift thinking in society. There would be a valuation for art over hate or fear.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Years into my working as an illustrator, at a time when clients called on the phone with projects, I was in my studio. After working with the ups and downs of editorial illustration, you get a feel for how the day is going to go. This day was different. The phone didn’t ring…at all! That was weird but, ok, it was a slow day I guessed. The next day and the next it didn’t ring. After a week, I was worried. I started to think about how much money I had in the bank and what I needed for the usual monthly bills. In the second week, I decided I’d make some new work for a promotional to send out. That was great! I usually didn’t have alot of time for making work just for myself. Yay! In the third week, I started looking for a job. Things had never been this quiet, Yikes! After a few days looking, I realized I didn’t have alot of skills that people advertising for jobs wanted :(. I was persistent and found a full-time position teaching illustration and design at a liberal arts college including one on a subject I wasn’t an expert in. I was already teaching a few classes part-time and liked it but wasn’t sure I wanted to do it full time. But I took a shot, did the interview, did some fancy footwork faking my way around that subject I didn’t know and was subsequently hired. The call to hire me was on Halloween Day. The next day, the phone rang with illustration projects and hasn’t stopped since. I declined the teaching position and went on with my studio business. That pivot and repivot happened because I found enough confidence in myself to think “yeh, maybe I can do this” and took the chance. Sometimes the lemons are your future lemonade.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.pbodydsign.com and www.whitneysherman.com
• Instagram: @pbodydsign and @whitneysherman
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/whitneysherman/

Image Credits
WhitneySherman-PbodyDsign©2023