ABOUT ME

I'm always studying and learning,
to keep up and TO Try to stay ahead of the pack,
But Mostly because I'm interested and excited ...

I started life with an artistic bent, and went to Pratt Institute in NY for a BFA in Fashion Design and graduating with honors, trying many other kinds of art as electives, including jewelry, painting, graphic design, stage design, and weld and forge (my favorite).  My favorite required courses were History of Costume (some of our classes were in the basement of the Metropolitan Museum in NY), History of Design, Art History, Pattern-making and Draping, and Design.

Then I decided that I hated the planned obsolescence of the fashion industry, became a leatherworker and expert custom leather designer and pattern-maker, and made really cool and also classic custom clothing and accessories, including work for many real rock stars and other celebrities and notables.
I was proud to be a dinosaur, using 50 year old machines and tools, making classic and wild designs for the guys next door and the celebrities, first with my own store in New York's West Village, and then in Brooklyn, and  PA for 30 years or more.

Eventually I married Fred Eisen and convinced him that he had to have a website and that I would learn to design it. I applied myself and created his first website.  That was over 10 years ago.
Since then we opened a second store and then sold it after 8 years.
All of my initial website experimentation and learning was for both of those "brick and mortar" stores, so I have plenty of first-hand experience.

According to the Kuder Vocational Preference Tests I took in 9th and 12th grade, my preferences were computational/mechanical first time, after a bad experience with an art teacher, and artistic/persuasive on the second, after a bad experience with a math teacher. 

Web design is the perfect meld for me, of artistic (Design)/persuasive(Sales)/computational(Analyzing and Organizing)/and mechanical(I've never met a computer that didn't need fixing sometimes and too often, and I'm not afraid of breaking open the box!)  I love it all!

So it took me until 40 something to find a different love, and now I've been improving on that skill for over 10 years, except that it's some of the same skills I already have used forever, including learning other languages (html).
 

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."  - Helen Keller

New Hope Web Design

Copyright Sharon Flanagan Designs 2008-2009