Designer Profile: Sheri Hoeger

Sheri Hoeger
The Mad Stencilist/SayWhat?
Placerville, CA

Sheri Hoeger has been a professional artist and decorative painter since 1988. “I started stenciling when I was home as a young mother and found it to be a great way to decorate and be creative.”, says Sheri. That eventually led to designing her own line of stencils. “There were very few choices available in those days, so I started making them to go with fabric or other elements going on in the room.”

Sheri got her start in business when friends, admiring work she’d done in her own home, began to ask for help with their homes. She was also encouraged by a house painter who told her he was often asked for stenciling work, and that there would be a demand for it. “I didn’t know anyone else at the time who did it as a business.”, Sheri says.

It wasn’t long before Sheri was stenciling just about everything in sight. Her son Justin, then 9 years old, said she was like a mad scientist, except that she was The Mad Stencilist. The name stuck.

Sheri’s company prides itself on providing great customer service. “We work very hard to set our customers up for success! We service a wide range of customers, from the beginning hobbiest to the seasoned professional. We provide not only innovative products, but the technical and educational support that helps them to succeed. We have perspective viewed from all sides of the business. As a retailer, teacher, product developer and artist still working in the field, we know what our customers need.”

Spiral Picasso Quote, by Carol Philbin

In addition to traditional stencils, Sheri offers SayWhat? Lettering, a vinyl self-adhesive stencil product that is customized and cut for each project. “We can help with custom decorative designs and logos as well. We have hundreds of fonts available and can stretch or curve the phrase to follow arches, etc. We cut anything from a short inspirational phrase to giant letters gracing water tanks. Some of our customers, like Jeff Raum, use our lettering in their mural painting.”

Sheri’s newest offering is It Goes Beyond Words!. “We have orchestrated an innovative program that uses the internet to its best advantage, a symbiotic relationship that benefits all. Through third party sources, we have access to thousands of decorative designs that are available for customization and cutting. We can cut these stencil designs from self-adhesive vinyl or from reusable stencil material.” Sheri has personally categorized hundreds of appropriate designs and organized them to make it easy for customers to find just what they are looking for.

Sheri’s recent work includes a mural, Arts Entwained, for the El Dorado Arts Council ArtSpace. “The mural celebrates the diversity of arts in our area, and wherever possible I used objects created or used by some of our most notable artists and organizations.” Musical instruments are a prominent part of the mural, as is the wit and wisdom of Mark Twain. “In this project, I combined many different techniques including stenciling, hand painting and gilding.” says Sheri.

Sheri is proud of the fact that she helps people to be creative. “I believe that being creative satisfies a basic human need. Whether it is with numbers or paint, it’s part of what we’re about.” she says.

• Renaissance Border
• Repositionable Art