Juliet Shen

Juliet Shen grew up in New York City, where her father was a translator at the United Nations and her mother painted, sculpted and was an expert seamstress. Juliet started oil painting in childhood, later studying at the Art Students League and Brooklyn Museum with Richard Mayhew. She attended Cooper Union School of Art Certificate Program at night while enrolled at Sarah Lawrence College in a full-time BA program. After college she continued making art in New York and also performed with avant-garde dancer Carmen Beuchat. After moving to Seattle in 1983, she had a long career as a graphic designer, running her own firm from 1989–2012 and teaching typography at the School for Visual Concepts. In 2006 she earned a masters degree in typeface design from the University of Reading, UK. Her font design for Lushootseed, the indigenous language of Puget Sound, has been acclaimed for its adherence to traditional Salish aesthetic sensibilities. Since 2012 she has been painting full time, exhibiting in nine solo and numerous group shows. Her work has been collected by Seattle Public Utilities, King County, Portland OR, and Tacoma Art Museum. She currently works with Chinese ink and brushes on large-scale rolls of Japanese gampi paper, depicting in minute detail the complex interplay of life and decay as observed in the forest.