spotlight on member beckett gladney

Designing Woman

With her one-of-a-kind moniker, “creative” may as well be Beckett Gladney’s middle name. Perhaps at birth her parents had an inkling of the artist she was destined to become. To hear Beckett tell it, though, her name is simply a family inheritance. At one point a woman’s surname, “Beckett” became the first name of her grandfather, who disliked it enough to eventually change it to “Henry.” But her mom “thought it was cool,” Beckett says, and bestowed it on her middle daughter—who embraces it happily.

Actually, Beckett’s parents could have reasonably foreseen that her name would someday grace works of art, both ink and digital. Her dad worked as a technical illustrator for California military contractors, doing computer-aided design (CAD) when the field was still in its infancy. The family moved around a lot—often in the middle of the school year—and Beckett and her older sister took up drawing early, in part to stave off the loneliness of being the new kids at every school. Though at first encouraged by their dad because, Beckett says, “it was a quiet activity,” ultimately he regarded art as a hobby rather than a career for his daughters. And Beckett, who spent much of high school experimenting with acrylics and “cheap and portable” pastels, set aside her greatest passion and headed for UC Davis thinking, “If I can’t be an artist I’ll be a vet.”

In college Beckett braved two years of biochemistry and physics before deciding she wasn’t cut out for medicine after all. And though Davis had a fine-arts program, she found it “too flaky” and “not practical enough” to prepare her for a career. Still hoping to study animal science, she designed her own major in behavioral ecology. This led her to some offbeat student jobs. There was, for instance, the gig working for a scientist who researched ground squirrel behavior, including the animal’s penchant for attacking rattlesnakes to prevent them from entering burrows and eating baby squirrels. For that one, Beckett tracked rattlesnakes tethered to leashes embedded in their bodies. Then there was the summer spent in the campus dairy, where for a free room and all the milk she could drink she fed and herded cows. The highlight? Her discovery that cows love the harmonica, which she frequently played for her bovine audience.

Ironically, Beckett’s determination to stick with the sciences is what launched her art career. Ink illustrations she drew for the “squirrel professor” to use in his academic papers led to freelance art assignments for other publications. After graduation and a few jobs working with animals at a stable and in a wildlife rescue program—for unlivable wages—Beckett put together an art portfolio and went knocking at Sacramento ad agencies. It was one particularly “cruel, arrogant guy” who told her she’d “never be an artist, you’re not good enough,” that ultimately drove her to prove to naysayers—and to herself—that she could indeed make a living through art.

Beckett signed on at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco for its “really good illustration department” and spent the next few years doing realistic drawing, learning business practices, and experimenting with computer design on early Macintoshes and other “clunky” machines. By graduation she’d already lined up contract work with a computer game company, a fortuitous move that coincided with the explosion of the gaming industry.

For the next decade Beckett rode the great gaming wave, working as an artist and art director for educational as well as recreational software companies. Games to her credit include the “Reader Rabbit” series and “Bubsy,” featuring a fictitious set of twins predating Beckett’s real-life set. Her career also meshed well with her husband’s. She had met Paul Kwinn at Davis when he was earning a degree in computer science and engineering, and the couple settled in Fremont when Beckett entered art school. Paul became a computer game programmer, and for a while he and Beckett even worked together on the same titles at the same software company.

Beckett and Paul enjoyed their parallel professional lives but eventually started thinking seriously about having kids—only to find themselves navigating the infertility minefield. After researching treatment options and rejecting them because of the expense, fate intervened: fraternal twin boys Casey and Riley were conceived spontaneously and were born in 2001.

To Beckett, twins Casey and Riley are a source of love, laughs . . . and artistic inspiration.

Overjoyed—and overwhelmed—by her double good luck, Beckett put her art career on hold for a while to better cope with the demands of multiples. She’d already been “getting burned out” with the game industry, which required ever more sophisticated knowledge of and access to 3-D software. While contemplating her next career move Beckett revamped the MOMs newsletter, designed props for a national Moms of Twins convention, and dabbled in other design projects. She also introduced her boys to “filk,” a blending of acoustic folk music with science fiction and fantasy themes. More than just long-time fans, Paul has played guitar and Beckett the harmonica with filk acts. The two enjoy attending filk conventions and hosting other filk musicians who come to town.

 

Beckett used ballpoint pen to capture Casey learning to use scissors (left) and Riley testing his wings (right).

Drawing inspiration from her sons, Beckett is now making a foray into illustrating children’s books and magazines. Though the field is competitive and publishers seem a bit arbitrary in their matching of authors and artists, Beckett is determined to make a go of it. Odds are she’ll find a way: after all, “creative” is her middle name. —Lisa Crystal

View more of Beckett’s work at www.artbeco.com

 

Copyright © tricitymoms.org. All Rights Reserved.