Shari Jenkins Schmit lives and creates in Great Falls now, but her love for art has always been there. She remembers when she was in the 1st grade in Fort Benton and as a Brownie participated in the town of Fort Benton's Valentine contest. Shari remembers she took her mom's red velvet and made her valentine heart with it. She glued the little heart candies that have sayings on them all around the edge. "Anyway, I won, and my picture was in the River Press."
She moved to Big Sandy in 1967 when her parents, Jerry and Joanne, bought the Nick Bush ranch and Shari was in the 3rd grade. She graduated from Big Sandy High School. Growing up and working as cowhands on the ranch formulated her life and her art. "My dad, who passed away this past year... So many people didn't realize that this tough old cowboy wrote some of the most awesome poems. He had a wealth of funny sayings too." She still loves her father's quick-witted comments, which she uses to design her art. She remembers and it impacts her work.
She loves Montana women. "I believe in women, and I'm just passionate about women". She features women in the majority of her designs.
Rural life and its history has greatly empowered her and she rarely, if ever, ventures from those values.
Shari says her art career began in 2007 when she decided to start her own greeting card company, The Bookmark Card, but her love for art started way before that. Her love for art started in grade school at Big Sandy F.E. Miley. She wanted to take art in college, but needed a more commonsense career so she got a degree in Business Marketing. I met her at Gallery 16 in Great Falls where her art is currently on display until the end of February. Some friends there commented that her degree had served her well allowing her to professionally market her art.
When she started her own greeting card company she designed her greeting cards to be used as bookmarks, because her sister Sheila also told her she throws away greeting cards and they were too expensive to buy just to throw away. For seven years she designed and printed her digital collage art cards using her kitchen table in butte. She worked with people at the Butte Sheltered Workshop to assembled them. It proved to be one of the most enjoyable and fulfilling times of her life.
In 2013, Leanin Tree, a Boulder, Colorado, company spotted Shari's bookmark cards in a Fort Worth Texas airport store. They contacted her and asked her if she would like to design greeting cards for them. She at first turned down the offer, but after a few months she called them and asked them if they would like to buy out her company and she would then exclusively design for them. It has turned out to be a wonderful partnership and Sheri continues to create new designs and her work is sold at over 30,000 different stores across the US.
Her art is "digital collage art" and it takes days to finish one piece. "Every design is a treasure hunt. From antique stores' dusty corners to thrift shops' aisles, from picking up dead bugs in my driveway to pulling a shock of chokecherries from a bush, you name it, my scanner has seen it. I scan everything from barbed wire to vintage petticoats, from shotgun shells to buttons, from jewelry, and, yes, to a dead dragonfly," said Jenkins. She pointed to the belt buckle the woman was wearing in one of her design and said, "That's a button." Sure, enough you could tell it once you looked closely, but I had to ask, because there was also a dinosaur in the picture standing behind the trailer, "Why is there a dinosaur in the picture with the women at a trailer park?" She laughed and said, "I like dinosaurs, and I guess because it's fierce and she's fierce too." Each new design takes days to complete and has 75 to 100 layers.
Shari's art was chosen to be featured in a juried show in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, known as the Western Design Conference. The western Design Conference is the foremost exhibition and celebration of what is happening in the world of museum quality functional art. The show will take place September 5-8, 2019 at Jackson's Snow King Center.
Shari and her husband Mike Schmit, who works for Northwestern Energy are currently restoring the Collins mansion that was built in 1891 for T. E. Collins. They intend to share the mansion with the community.
According to article by Suzanne Waring in Montana Senior News, "For many years, Jenkins' career was in fundraising. She has a degree in planned giving from the College of William & Mary and worked as the development director for Central Montana Medical Center in Lewistown. She also did fundraising for the Great Falls' Poor Claire's monastery. She was hired to do fundraising at The History Museum; however, when personnel learned that she was talented as a graphic and exhibit designer, she spent considerable time designing at the computer.
For the past several years, Jenkins has also licensed her designs with Ganz, a leading manufacturer and wholesaler in the U.S. gift market. Her designs have been featured on items such as mugs, wine glasses, and glass trays. Ganz items with Jenkins' designs are found in 15,000 stores across the country."
To see more of Shari's art, look up ShariJenkins.com.
