INTERVIEW
SHEILA GRABER LOCAL ANIMATOR, ARTIST AND EDUCATOR SHEILA GRABER TALKS TO TRACY HYMAN ABOUT HER EXTRAORDINARY CAREER The first thing to immediately become apparent when talking to octogenarian artist and animator Sheila Graber is her passion for the arts and education. The South Shields-born artist has as global reputation, having had her work shown across the world and innumerable shorts screened from the likes of the Tate Gallery and the Pompidou Centre. Whether she’s beating Disney to an animation job or documenting her beloved local area, she talks with passion and enthusiasm about the many “happy accidents” that led to some fascinating projects. Sheila’s latest commercial exhibition, Sheila From Shields & Her Cat, is on display via The Customs House website, and sales from her work will raise money for the South Shields institution. Having begun capturing her home town in paintings from the age of 11, Sheila’s artwork takes the viewer on a journey of the area; from her
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time living in the pilotage when her dad was the Tyne Pilot Master, taking in the transformation of the area over the decades. The online exhibition is accompanied by insights into Sheila’s work by Shields Gazette journalist Janis Blower, whose words add information, humanity and humour to Sheila’s animations and paintings. Of Sheila’s many career highlights the QuiziCat must be one of the favourites; a curious animation inspired by Whitey the cat, an inspiration for Sheila during the first 21 years of her animation career and beyond, who leads the viewer around the online exhibition. On the subject of highlights, Sheila cites being asked to animate Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories instead of Disney; the Kipling Estate hadn’t liked what Disney had done with the Jungle Book. “I was invited by a French agent to sell my films that I’d started just for
