CS Artist Spotlight: Simone Shin and Her Love For Music and Arts

Yet another Creativity School spotlight as we feature Simone Shin, an award-winning children’s book illustrator, in part of our celebration of International Women’s Month.

Get to know her amazing journey through her love of music and arts.

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Simone Shin, Award-winning Illustrator

Simone Shin is an award-winning children’s book illustrator who loves creating things using fabric and cardboard – game boards, telephones, dollhouses, and so much more!

At Creativity School, she teaches Sight Words, Draws Pictures (SWDP).

Check out these awesome blogs to learn more about Sight Words, Draw Pictures!

The influence of music

Hydi Hoeger: Hi Simone!

Simone Shin: Hi, how are you?

Hydi Hoeger: Good! Thanks for agreeing to meet me! I didn’t know that you play the guitar. Is it a guitar back there?

Simone Shin: Yes! That’s sort of related to a lot of the things that we might talk about.

Hydi Hoeger: Yeah, I just feel like your creativity is just like overflowing in every direction. Well, that’s funny that I’ve never noticed that. Has it always been there?

Simone Shin: Yeah, because it doesn’t really move [laughing]. But the guitar is kind of like everything else where my parents made me take violin lessons. They’d say, because I was really little, I was like 6 years old and they’re were like “What instrument do you want to play?” My cousin and my brother played violin, and my other cousin played the flute. And they were kind of like, “You should play the flute… you should play the violin.” I just chose violin. It was just random, you know? That became my life from age 6-18. Every Sunday, I had violin lessons.

Hydi Hoeger: Really? Oh my gosh, so violin and guitar?

Simone Shin: Violin lessons, and then by the time I was in junior high school, I knew how to play the flute. So if you know how to play one, you can sort of read the music for the others. I learn a little bit of flute and my sister brought home a trombone so I can play a little bit of that and then I learned saxophone. The saxophone was the one where I was like, yeah, I’m going to be good at this, but it was actually the one that I was most awful at [laughing]. I have my own saxophone and everything. It was exciting, like I am gonna be good, but I was really the most terrible at it. You read a different clef than the violin.

Hydi Hoeger: It’s written a little differently.

Simone Shin: Yeah. I just remember I was not good at it.

Hydi Hoeger: I played the clarinet. The rule was like you gotta play the clarinet before you can play the saxophone. Kenny G was the man back then, you know. So I’m gonna be like this crazy jazz musician. I’m gonna play these awesome songs, but saxophone- I never got through. I did parades and stuff with my clarinet but with sax, Nope, this is not working out for me [laughing]. Well, I wanted to play the flute. My mom was a flute player, my sisters… all of them. So I picked up the flute in the living room when I was home alone. I start blowing into it, and I just passed out.

Simone Shin: Oh no!

Hydi Hoeger: I wasn't breathing right, and I thought, okay, flute’s not for me. [laughing] Anyway, any other instruments that you play?

Simone Shin: Well, those, I think we had lessons for the flutes. I did take lessons just because I was lucky. My sister took flute lessons from the girlfriend of my brother who was in high school at the time. And so she was already was coming to our house and giving us a cheap lesson. So my mom threw me in and she’s like, “You can teach her, too.” So I got flute lessons for a very, very short stint of time. And I did piano lessons, I think we [me and my sister] asked my parents for a piano. But then, the piano is hard. I don’t know, two things at once? I don’t know, but in my head, it was harder than the violin.

Hydi Hoeger: Yeah, I grew up playing the piano. My mom was a pianist and she taught me piano lessons. It’s like you are reading a language with both hands and multiple notes.

Simone Shin: It’s like you’re reading two books at once. It is different than the violin. So guitar, I could self-teach by the time I was like 18 or whenever that I picked that up.

Hydi Hoeger: Yeah, especially knowing the violin, you know the bridges and how that works.

Simone Shin: Or just get tabs from the internet. [laughing]

Hydi Hoeger: [laughing] That too! Yeah, it’s interesting. I found a lot of artists, like painting artists, are also musicians. I think they [arts] just seem to accompany each other.

The Budding Artist

Simone Shin: One of the things that is related is that my parents are the type of people who put me in extracurricular activities. Obviously violin. So when I was really interested in drawing and stuff, they also put me in summertime art classes and all those things. I had a couple of private art lessons because, in Korea, it’s very common to have maybe a private instructor, like a piano teacher. It was all a coincidence! My parents weren’t seeking this stuff out. It was just a piano teacher we had was Korean and she had a friend who was just out of art college who needed a job. She was like, “Do you mind if your kids get a mini-lesson? She’ll go to your house.” My parents are so busy working they were like, “Well, if she’ll come to the house, it's fine.” So I had, for a couple of years, I had an art teacher and she taught me and my little sister basics. We were pretty young, and we had watercolor and drawing and all that stuff.

Hydi Hoeger: But this was in America? Your parents were from Korea, but you were born here, right?

Simone Shin: Yes. So this teacher was also from Korea, and she didn’t know English. But she taught us shading, and all those, you know, kind of like more advanced level stuff. For me, because I think I was in junior high and my sister was in elementary school. We got lucky and she came to our house. And then, eventually, we just got older and then, you know, whittled down the extracurriculars to whatever we remained interested in.

Hydi Hoeger: So, is that kind of when you started loving art or was it before that?

Simone Shin: I think it was before I think I was really good at drawing and all that stuff and I independently would make things out of cardboard like dollhouses. I still have them! I would make a lot of things out of cardboard 3D because I thought it was cool. So I made a big phone, like a 90’s phone, and I would just make a lot of 3D objects because I just thought they were so cool to have.

Unity through Diversity Club

Hydi Hoeger: How did that affect your love of art? Were you ever like, “I know that this is what I wanna do.”

Simone Shin: Yes, but I never wanted to do it as a job. It was just fun to learn and I thought like, when you get a skill set, like learning the shades and all those things, you feel like you are pretty good at this. I thought I was so good when I was a little kid because I could do a 3D object. It helps your self-esteem. It really made me feel like, “Oh, I’m really really good at this as compared to other little kids”. And back in high school, I didn't opt to do any art class. I think I used up those little extra credits for orchestra because my friends were in the orchestra and then I did sports because of my friends, you're sort of doing what your friends do by then, but then I kept with some of the art because they needed a lot for school. So I did like our class t-shirt. You know, like little things whenever they needed art for high school things.

“There’s a mural that my friends and I made in high school while we were in this club called Racial Unity Club.”

A long time ago in freshman year when it was just such a weird club to have and the only members were my older brother, who was a senior, and his girlfriend and his like 2 or 3 friends. It was a very small club of these older people and they were leaving the club and there was an advisor. There would be no one left to continue the club so they brought us to the meeting, by coincidence, I and my friends were the siblings of these older people and so they were like, guys if you don’t do it, then the club is gone. So, we sort of took over the Racial Unity Club with my cross-country track friends, and then they changed the name to Unity Through Diversity because they thought the word racial was too controversial or something. So, with Unity Through Diversity, we did random little things. One of them was that, by senior year, we painted a mural that’s so cheesy, it says,

“Unity starts with U and I”

It’s like a giant U and an I and then we made like people on Earth, just like all these images sort of overlap each other and it was the only mural, like a square on this big surface. And I looked at it like 10 years ago, and it was still there. And there’s nothing else around it. When I looked at it, there are murals that are in the same square footage all over the campus. Like they took that blueprint and then every year they were making another mural and they’re all over now. There are square murals all over the hallways.

Hydi Hoeger: Is it the same club that does it?

Simone Shin: I don’t know, it was just like year after year, it just became a tradition to make square murals. There were a bunch of murals but the original mural is still there. Although they repainted the bottom. There’s like the Earth, and then animals on it, you know diversity happening. I guess it wasn’t very good according to some art students [laugh] We were not art students, we were just like random kids right? And it was pretty good. But somebody painted over the whole bottom half, redid it, and put their names on it.

Hydi Hoeger: [shocked face]

Simone Shin: Yeah, I was like, Oh no! I was still mad I was like that was the original mural. Somebody else claimed it, so that’s the story of that.

Hydi Hoeger: I’m coming after you! You just got outed! [laughing] That’s interesting. Wow. You’re a trendsetter.

Simone Shin: Yeah, and how like modern was that we were in unity through diversity? I think about it, because at that time it was like a nerd club, like, who cares about racial unity.

Hydi Hoeger: Yeah, I think all artistic people were eccentric enough to be in tune with things… change.

“And creative people don’t necessarily have to be artists.”

Simone Shin: I would say all of those friends I had were very creative and a lot of them went in the science fields and work for engineering, you know, but creative outlets like working for YouTube or Google, or something like that? Those are not necessarily artistic but their companies ought to have a creative person.

Hydi Hoeger: Yeah, just to be able to think outside the box and say how else can we attack this problem or fix it. I remember reading an article about NASA and they were trying to— and I think I share this is one of the classes— they were trying to figure out how to get this… I want to say it was a satellite or something. It was something that they were trying to launch and they could not get it to fit where it needed to go. And so they brought in an origami master and the origami master origami'd this so that, you know, it fits in there and then when it was in the appropriate place it unfolded. And I was like, that is the perfect example of creativity.

Pursuing arts as a career track

Hydi Hoeger: So you were not in art classes in high school, but what made you decide on Art Center? You were at Art Center, right?

Simone Shin: Yeah, I didn’t take art classes. At the time, my parents encouraged me to go to art college right out of high school, but I was hesitant because I didn’t have any high school art credit. I did my senior year, I was really into charcoal portrait-like realistic ones so I had this obsession with art on the side and I suppose I could have put together a portfolio. But I didn’t want to. This is me as a teenager not wanting to do what my parents wanted me to do because their premise was they just did not think I was smart enough to get into a regular college because to them it’s like you have to be an engineer or you have to be a doctor. Otherwise, it’s like, why go to college? They really had no concept of how the school operated and how grades operated, and all that stuff. So they had really assumed that- they were afraid that I wouldn’t get into community college, even though I tried to explain like I think anyone can get into community college [laughing].

Simone Shin: So I was viewing it like, I don’t want to go to art college because, in their eyes, I can’t achieve anything else. And I also logically was like, “What do you do with an art degree?” Even in high school, I was like “What do people do?”, because they don’t teach you in high school that you can have a career. All you’re ever taught is that it’s fun.

Simone Shin: It’s different in Korea because I took a class once. I’ve taken my Korean-based classes and there’s a lot more emphasis on what you can get a job in like design school or you could go to college and then do this. But in the United States, there’s a lot more emphasis on children to just, “Art is anything, you could do whatever you want”, but there is no concept. There is a structure though:

“If you do want to be an artist, you will have to learn all the essentials, all the basics”

Hydi Hoeger: And I think it’s eye-opening when you do go to art college, or any kind of art school and you’re like, “You want me to draw for how many hours I’ve done this and I already know how to draw human figures, now I create, now learn draping.” I think it’s more about creating an expression and things like that, which is great. It’s learning how to communicate through art.

“We never talked about art to children as something that you could have a job from.”

Simone Shin: I think that’s important and I like how Arree sort of incorporates money management because, in the end, we never talked about art to children as something that you could have a job from. So when I was in high school, I just thought, “What job can you get?” or, “What are you supposed to do with an arts degree?”, so I said no at first. I know that’s what a lot of parents teach their kids cuz I was an art teacher for so long. One time I was a teacher somewhere else and this little girl who like 6 was like, “I love art school so much”! She was so enthusiastic about it, and she was like, I wanna be an art teacher like you!, and I was like, “That’s cool!”, but then she was like, “But I can’t”, and I was like, “Why not?” She’s like, “My mom says I can’t because our teachers are poor”. She was so disheartened just like she was so upset that she couldn’t have this job because her mom was like you’re not going to make money. You can’t be an artist in any way. And then being the art teacher, I was like, “Excuse me?” [laughing]

Hydi Hoeger: Wait, I am affected! [laughing]

Simone Shin: But I mean, that’s what we teach our kids without you even recognizing it.

Starving artist mentality, if you got and do what you love, you’re going to starve doing it.

Hydi Hoeger: Yeah the starving artist mentality- if you got and do what you love, you’re going to starve doing it. Yeah. Yeah, and I do think that’s good and you know, if you learn from me, you probably would starve, but Arree is you know [laughing], that’s where his brain is – entrepreneurial and like how to make this something that you can be successful at.

Journey into the ArtCenter College of Design

Simone Shin: Yeah, I think that I didn’t go to art school because of that and a lot of other teenage reasons, so I went to a liberal arts college. I tried to get jobs doing this and that but that that sort of melted into me ended up going to art school. Anyway, because I had self-taught myself guitar and I had a few years where I was in several different bands, and I was recording music and I had like a mini album and I was performing as a freelance singer-songwriter in Los Angeles in different venues by myself. I think that really helped because I did not have any portfolio at all. When I decided to go to ArtCenter, at that point I was just like, you know, I already knew colleges just need you to convince them that you will be successful somehow. That’s what we apply. So I got some advice from a friend on what sort of images to put in a portfolio and then my whole process was just like, oh, I’ve already freelanced in music without any formal training. I was able to get these gigs and do all these things. You know, I’m assuming a freelance illustrator will be a similar process when I get out, and so I went in.

Simone Shin: Going to art school wasn’t even like, “This is my plan now”. It was more like I was going to be a teacher and I was with an ex-boyfriend and his mom was like, don’t be a teacher because LA universities are very difficult to be happy in, I guess. She was near to retirement, but all the curriculum, you know, like you couldn’t teach the way you wanted to, she felt very stifled, “You’re not gonna be happy after 20 years of teaching.”

Simone Shin: So they convinced me to go to the art center because I was already in Pasadena, and they were like, “We bet if you could get in there”. So I almost did it, hesitantly like, “Should I even be…” I almost half didn’t want to, which is a very weird decision in my 20s, you know. And then when I got in and went to orientation, I was so shocked. I was like, “What did I get myself into?” I was like, I know it takes as much work but I know how to put myself in that but I just have to be mentally prepared. It’s almost like mentally preparing to have a baby or something that you know is gonna be a lot of work and will be very rewarding, but I was like, “Man, should I do this? I guess I’ll do it.” and so I went into the ArtCenter.

Hydi Hoeger: And the ArtCenter is no joke, it’s one of the best. I know the instructors are somewhat very demanding. You will get good with what you’re doing there. So your parents were like, “You’re finally doing what we wanted you to do.”

Simone Shin: I thought, they’ll be like, “Yey! She’s finally doing what she wanted”, then mid-twenties, my mom was like, “Are you sure? ” [laughing]. I was like, “Why are you guys not on the same vibe as me?” But I did it anyway, and then I kind of felt guilty the whole time I was at the Art Center. I was like, I really needed to make it worthwhile because I was thinking this place is so expensive and it’s more like I really felt I had to make a career out of it.

“So every process, every step of the way, every class, it’s all in the preparation of having a career.”

Hydi Hoeger: Tell me how valuable this is going to be in my future.

“Like we think of the artist as like Van Gogh or you know some freelance thing but this is a very small amount of people actually going to that career field”

Simone Shin: Yeah, and I think people don’t realize for their kids that. Like we think of the artist as like Van Gogh or you know some freelance thing but this is a very small amount of people actually going to that career field it because it’s hard but that takes a very specific type of personality but Art and Design is almost everything it’s you know, the graphic design plenty of desk job so we can get graphic design jobs, you could do what Arree used to do, game design and creative director of like a gaming company a lot of people going to games cuz they’re so into gaming themselves as children, they were into that. And animation. I know a lot of people who do animation – some do freelance, some work in house, but there are just so many art jobs that are if you’re more of like a 9-5 hour person or a creative king person, there are so many jobs that you could get into I mean, its all hard to its just like everything else is very competitive, but there’s a lot of work there but people don’t talk about those fields as art when they are. Maybe they separate them in the mind as design but ArtCenter sort of melted it all together.

Road to being an Illustrator

Hydi Hoeger: So you went into Illustrations, specifically?

Simone Shin: Illustration but not like in-house, like for an animation company or something.

Hydi Hoeger: Right, but more independent

Simone Shin: Yeah, but as I said, that takes a very specific personality, so if you’re going to art school, you have that personality who can, “I’m just going to sit there and create my own song” and then record it with your recording studio and then go to a bar and be like, “Hey, will you guys let me perform?”. Not everyone can do that. Yeah, I know, and I’m aware of that. Like I sort of went into illustration knowing what sort of field it is. It’s kind of like all you and your own self-contained business. If you have that entrepreneurial spirit and you think that you can do your own thing then by all means do it, but I think a lot of people think that everyone has to be like that, but there are so many different types of jobs.

Hydi Hoeger: And personalities, you know, even in the Creativity School, I am moderating all these classes and you know the whole spectrum of personalities, you know from people who are super prepared to people who are more on the fly, and there’s a job for everyone who wants a piece. Even animation, one of my friends who does animation said it takes a very specific type of person to sit down and to do everything they do.

Simone Shin: Our friend, Keka, is an animator or ‘was’. It was very stressful for her. She works for Disney and all that, but just the amount of hours she had to put in- the amount of detail that they demanded from her for her is just stressing her out. But then I have another friend, Craig, who does it and he’s okay with it, you know.

Hydi Hoeger: Yeah. Yeah, and so I was talking of my friend Benson and he’s [also] a Disney animator and you know, they only have like one minute that they work on but it has to flow from one artist to another without changing styles, without anything noticeable changing that kind of structure. I know it isn’t for everybody. Arree has told me he likes creative freedom.

“Do they want it that bad, because if they do, they’ll be able to make some sort of success out of it, eventually.”

Simone Shin: Yeah, it’s kind of whatever motivates you. If I were to give advice to parents and all that is sort of like, what kind of personality does your child have you know, and do they end for anything really? Do they want it that bad, because if they do, they’ll be able to make some sort of success out of it, eventually.

Hydi Hoeger: Yeah, I think if it’s something that gravitates towards especially when they gravitate towards it a lot. I think, as a mother myself, I want some things for my kids. I want them, you know, it’s not necessarily about the money but it’s about being secure and successful want that for our kids. But at the same time allowing them to find that path and pursue that.

Simone Shin: Yeah, but if you implement that and you implement a sort of always needing financial security also, they will go if even they were an artist, they will most likely go into the feeling with that at the back of their head all the time and they’ll create their own future based on those concepts, you know.

Hydi Hoeger: Do you always have that in your mind that you need to get square with yourself?

“Somehow, what I learned at the Art Center and through the Art Center is that it’s not that “Some people make it, some people don’t”. Essentially, it’s that some people worked harder and never gave up. That’s it. There was no other secret to it, except that person just didn’t give up.”

Simone Shin: Yes, I mean I had a bad concept on how money was made my whole life. I was making it, but it took me a while to figure things out. But I would say whatever you implement in children, even if it’s not related to art. If they want to do art, they’re going to implement it in their practice anyway. Somehow, what I learned at Art Center and through after Art Center is that it’s not that “Some people make it, some people don’t”. Essentially, it’s that some people worked harder and never gave up. That’s it. There was no other secret to it, except that person just didn’t give up.

“I got a crapload of rejection. But I got used to that, you just gotta keep going.”

Simone Shin: I had friends who were up there like to think, you know, she just thought they were, all the students, they were great and when they were not getting the work that they thought they would be getting right after art school, it really affected them. And then there are people who were coming after me saying, “You’re just lucked out you got that award that gave you all these opportunities.” I was like, “It doesn’t work that way”. I got a crapload of rejection. But I got used to that, you just gotta keep going.

“Children are like chalkboards, and whatever message you write, that is what they think of themselves.”

Hydi Hoeger: Yeah, when your self-esteem is wrapped up in the praise of other people, you are not going to progress when you do not get enough praise. Yeah. Yeah. I think that is such an amazing thing that you know that you were able to do it. Like one of the things that I have been taught is you know, children are like chalkboards, and whatever message you write, that is what they think of themselves.

Simone Shin: You’re right because when I was little everyone was like you’re so good at art-my friends did, my teachers did, my parents did, when I was very young and then it did not really turn out that way when I was at art school, cuz everyone is so good at Art Center. I got a little frustrated but with the violin lesson my parents never made me miss a single day, they drilled it in me that I just have to keep going and never give up, so I just kept going and put in the work., you know, no questions asked. I didn’t say “Oh, this is too hard or you know, “I got to stop” I was just like, “Oh, well, gotta try again”.

Hydi Hoeger: Yeah, so I think your parents were really instrumental in molding you into this person who is resilient and who believes in herself and pushes through and does hard things. Okay, can you tell me a little bit about how you got into Illustration

Simone Shin: In Illustration and I think it’s important that you got to go if it’s your self-contained business like you want to be a children’s book illustrator [say it’s very specific like that]. But you have to learn to go with the flow. Maybe you won’t end up there, but you’ll end up somewhere else in art because I never planned to become a children’s book illustrator. I thought I didn't really have a plan. I think in the beginning, I’ll go into product design because I thought I have to be practical with my art. I didn’t go into product design. I just went where I was advancing more in my head sort of like whatever the teachers were like, “Oh, you’re really really good at this particular thing”. So I started to go that direction, and it’s more like Fine Art illustration. Then when I got out I thought I would do some editorial work and figure it out. There was no set plan and I thought to myself. I’m going to make one children’s book before the age of 40 just because that was the goal of my children’s book teacher [laugh]. But then it came to settling and having a family, I thought well, I really want a freelance job specifically because it will give me the freedom to raise my child and work from home. The other things like editorial work were just so hard to come by so I got, you know I really looked into trying to get contracted for a children’s book because it was more extended work, and I learned more through the process. Now you need an agent and then it just sort of went from there. It was never my plan.

Simone Shin: But it was mostly in sync because at the time I had a child and I was like, “Alright, children’s book, that makes sense”. So he grew up, and it just melded together pretty well.

On women being in the field of art

Hydi Hoeger: So this is Women’s History Month, do you think being a woman has a different weight attached to it? You know being in this industry, do you feel disadvantaged to that or do you feel that this was just perfect

Simone Shin: This is a heavy question [laughing]. When I was at ArtCenter when you see all the different career fields that you’re not part of, I would say the animation course was heavily more like males versus females. A lot more guys, I would say. It was just like competitive in that way where every once in a while, you’d see a girl who did very successfully in entertainment illustration. But it just seemed like more guys are into the field at the time. This is a long time ago. And there seem to be a lot more women in Design, in general. There’s like a Design Illustration course and gaming there would be some women but not as many. Editorials are not I don’t know. It’s still sort of a more male-dominated field meaning not even just the population but like the ones who are successful are mostly male. But it has obviously changed a lot since I’ve been in art school.

Hydi Hoeger: I do feel like there is a transition happening where you know, where it has been mostly, you know male and white male-dominated, you know, it’s starting to even those awards are being diversified.

Simone Shin: And yeah, I think around the time I graduated as what it started to diversify a lot. So the people that I was looking up to were older than me. Yeah that was sort of like the blueprint was very specific and then you came after, definitely a lot more women, you know in the same fields and all that.

Hydi Hoeger: And women have more diverse backgrounds I know I listen to a Library of Congress webinar last Saturday and it was you know, it was very much about how women, you know have so much to bring to the table and you know how we can

Simone Shin: Yeah, the children’s book illustration industry is you know a lot of writers are women, and a lot of people work in education. That’s almost like teaching. I was really drawn to teaching but teaching is a very female-oriented sort of population there and it’s not very diverse in that sense. I remember when I went to the first children’s book conference that I ever went to, which was a long time ago before it got really diverse, the first thing I noticed when I went to the big auditorium full of all these people was, “Wow, everybody is a middle-aged white woman!”, like that was like the majority of people who are in children’s books. Since then, that conference has been so crazy diversified. They would make jokes yearly like how can we get more men involved, and now, there’s a good amount of men and very diverse in different ethnicities but also age. Before the age thing was like, “Wow, everybody is like a forty to a sixty-year-old white woman” and it kind of reminds me of my teachers from when I was younger, right?

Hydi Hoeger: Yes, they finally got all of their kids off to college. It’s time for them to go embrace their second career now.

Simone Shin: Yeah, it’s different though now, it’s different.

Hydi Hoeger: Yeah, you know, I respect that so much. I think that’s I think it’s so important to kids to be able to see outside of their lives, you know outside of whatever is going on in their community, you know, however, limited it might be, you know to see people in different situations in different parts of the world, Believe in other things and you know religion culture food, you know, all of those things the way others live and you know, I think children’s literature is a great way to do it and illustrations are one of my favorite things about books. Yeah. Yeah, and I love your illustrations. I think they just resonate – I would say sweet but that seems not I think that’s the right word for it. There’s just something warm about them.

Simone Shin: I mean that’s a whole other like you know when I took the children’s book class, what inspired me is that and then the more conferences I went to [there’s a lot of them], you know, like a lot of creativity comes from them encouraging you to remember what it was like to read the books when you were little and how those books inspired you, and I never realized until I was getting into it career-wise, like “Wow, the children’s book that I read, the picture books that I read were very influential in my life.”

Outside of Creativity School

Hydi Hoeger: Okay, so I don’t know what you’re doing outside of creativity school. Like we just when we talk we talk about Creativity school.

Simone Shin: It’s all weird now, with the pandemic crisis. Prior to everyone having to work-at-home, I was working as an art teacher at an art school for children and then also doing children’s books. So those are the two main things that I was doing and then to make extra money which at the time I thought was extra money and then it ended up being the main money source when I did substitute teaching. It was just teaching all classes, you know, and I thought that was a nice deal because it was like as a freelancer sometimes I would have deadlines, so substitute teaching was good because there was no commitment to having to be there all the time. You could just say I’m not available these times, you know, so I can sort of manage the substitute teaching with all the other freelance work, and then the pandemic happened, and the substitute teaching, it disappeared because the schools were all closed. But I always have children’s books I am working on.

Hydi Hoeger: What are you working on outside of Creativity School?

Simone Shin: There’s always a book that I was finishing, and then one that’s beginning right now, one that should be coming out. So there’s always something rolling through.

The Wrap Up

Hydi Hoeger: Well, I will just ask you one more question because I know your son is missing you. What would be like the one thing that parents and kids should know, I mean, you’ve given some great advice, but if you were to wrap it all up and say this is what you need to do.

Simone Shin: You know just like from my childhood, I noticed just giving them the basics, the concept that they have to follow through with things just like you would for anything, you know that the ability to stick with something and not give up and good practicing good practices, you know, all of that stuff all that practical stuff you don't think it will somehow influence whether they’ll become successful in the art world, but it heavily does. Yeah, and then on top of that also constantly encouraging their creative process in what they do, but both are necessary.

Hydi Hoeger: That’s a good way to consolidate what you were saying earlier, you know, we know that you worked hard, you believed in yourself and you had those core basics. I think having parents that believe in you and believe that you could find your way, I think that’s important too.

Simone Shin: Yes, for sure.

Hydi Hoeger: Thank you so much for meeting with me and for talking about everything. It was a lot of fun.

Simone Shin: And Creativity School does a pretty good job with the whole being able to post your children’s artwork. I think that really helps the kid, you know think that “Well my parents really think my art is good that they’re posting it online.” And other people were liking it too because it seemed so minimal but that’s a really big deal to the kid.

Hydi Hoeger: To be acknowledged, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. We actually open up an email account. Even if they don't have social media they can yeah. I would definitely make it tough. Alright. Well, thank you, Simone. I will let you get your life again and your son. I will see you on Thursday?

Simone Shin: Thank you so much, this was fun!

Watch more of Simone and Hydi's lovely talk here:

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