The Artist Behind the PEARLS Brand: Bee’s Creative Journey

Long before she became a designer shaping one of Milwaukee’s most recognizable youth-centered brands, Bee was a quiet kid redrawing anime stills at home. 

“I was unbelievably quiet,” she says. “I had a twin, so I had no reason to talk to other people.” 

What Bee did have was imagination in spades, and a family that nurtured it from the very beginning. 

Art was simply how Bee understood herself and the world around her. As a child and into the teen years, she spent hours tracing anime tutorials, sketching original characters, and experimenting with visual storytelling. By twelve, she was already taking commissions online through Instagram, using her dad’s PayPal account to receive payments. 

“That really helped me feel like this was real,” she says. “I didn’t have a typical job in middle school or high school because I was just doing art commissions.” 

Original character design became a central part of Bee’s creative process. Over time, those characters accumulated emotional and psychological detail drawn from her own life.  

“I’ve never made a character that had zero part of me,” she reflects. 

As her work progressed, she began to notice how her internal experiences appeared in her illustrations. Character development became a way to examine feelings and perspectives that were still forming. Comments from followers on her popular social media accounts pointed out similarities between her and her characters which pushed her to think differently about the relationship between artist and art. Navigating visibility as a young artist through audience engagement began to shape how she evaluated her output. 

As Bee’s online audience expanded, so did the pressure to create for approval instead of joy. The spontaneity she once loved slowly became tangled with engagement metrics, audience expectations, and self-criticism. 

“The more popular I got on Instagram, the more conscious I became of everything I posted,” she says. “I started creating while thinking about likes and comments.” 

She eventually stepped back from sharing personal work so publicly. Her current practice focuses on creating without distribution pressure, with selective sharing among close peers. 

“You should always enjoy creating just to create.” 

Now, many of her favorite creative practices exist outside of public consumption entirely. She crochets, sews, paints with watercolor, experiments with sculpture, designs tattoos, and takes local art classes simply because she enjoys learning. 

“I want some things to stay hobbies,” she says. “I want to make gifts for friends because I feel like it.”

That intentionality shows up everywhere in Bee’s life. Her creativity is deeply relational and nothing Bee does is performative. Whether she is customizing a phone case for a friend, designing a deck of cards filled with shared memories, or crafting handmade gifts with practical purpose, her work centers care. 

“I know I succeeded when the person cries,” she laughs.

When Bee entered the professional world, she didn’t leave her artistry behind, she refined how to apply it. 

Joining PEARLS as a young Marketing Communications Intern, she quickly became a defining visual voice within the organization. What began as social media support evolved into something much larger: helping shape the organization’s entire creative identity. 

“At first, the brand felt very dark and heavy,” she explains. “I saw all these beautiful colors and playful elements that weren’t really being used.”

Over time, Bee introduced softer palettes, bold graphics, movement, collage work, and expressive visual systems that brought new energy into the brand. Her influence helped transform PEARLS into something vibrant, youthful, and immediately recognizable. 

“I wanted anyone to glance at our materials and do a double-take,” she says. “I wanted it to feel loud, bold, and fun.”

Today, Bee serves as PEARLS Brand Design Specialist, a title she says empowered her to fully step into ownership of the organization’s creative direction. 

“It helped me realize that I really did help build this,” she says.

Still, Bee draws a clear distinction between personal art and professional design. 

Bee is someone who always thoroughly enjoys critique in the artistic process, but when feedback comes through on branding work, she sees it differently. 

“It’s not my identity,” she explains. “I’m using my skills to interpret someone else’s vision.”

That mindset has made Bee a collaborative and growth-oriented designer. She actively seeks critique from her team and believes strong creative work depends on openness, and humility. 

“You’re not going to grow if you don’t take critique,” she says. “It’s not personal.”

As design industries increasingly shift toward automation and AI-generated content, Bee remains deeply committed to protecting the human side of creativity. 

“For art, nothing will ever be better than the human eye,” she says.

While she understands why organizations turn to AI tools for convenience or speed, she worries about what gets lost when artists stop exercising their own creative instincts. 

“You’re not going to find your creative voice if you’re replacing the creative process,” she explains. “Sitting down, sketching thumbnails, researching ideas — that’s exercise for your creative brain.”

For Bee, creativity is not just about output. It is about thoughtfulness, experimentation, observation, and emotional connection. That belief shapes not only her own work, but also how she mentors younger creatives. 

Through teaching workshops and collaborative design sessions at PEARLS, Bee has introduced girls in the program to the fundamentals of visual storytelling and professional design thinking. From teaching Canva basics to guiding students through thumbnail sketches and merchandise concepts, she wants young artists to understand that creativity can become a meaningful career. 

“You lose nothing by trying,” she says. “Go to the workshop. Try the thing. The worst someone can say is no.”

She dreams of eventually freelancing full-time and opening a nonprofit branding agency that supports small businesses and nonprofits who cannot afford professional design services. Already, she volunteers her time helping community organizations strengthen their visual identities and move away from impersonal AI-generated branding. 

“It affects trust,” she says. “People can feel when something loses its human touch.”

That commitment to humanity, in art, branding, mentorship, and relationships, is what defines Bee’s creative journey most clearly. 

Whether she is designing a campaign, sketching in private, teaching young artists, or handmaking gifts for friends, Bee approaches creativity not as content production, but as connection. 

And that is exactly what makes her work resonate so deeply: every piece carries evidence of the person behind it. 

Bee’s work is everywhere at PEARLS and her impact goes far beyond design. She helps our girls see that their ideas definitely matter and their imagination can shape the world around them. 

Thank you, Bee, for teaching us all to live more authentically. You make everything around you beautiful. 

With gratitude, 

The PEARLS Team