Thank you for stopping by. My name is Heather Sherrell, and I am the founder of Form Dot Function. I grew up in Chicago to Artists Steve and Sally Sherrell. I was greatly influenced by Fine Art from an early age. Ours is a small, tight family that focuses on creating, learning, experiencing, experimenting…doing. Music, nature, art, literature, travel, cuisine, film; we were always into something. We didn’t have much money growing up – starving artists and all that, but my parent’s came from sophisticated families. I spent my childhood summers visiting grandparents where I was exposed to and therefore influenced by the fancier things in life such as great design, fine antiques, fine furniture, jewelry, fast cars, and retail. And the houses? Man, the houses were out of site.
My mom’s mother and her husband lived in a large estate home in the heart of Anderson, Indiana. My grandfather’s law office was on the first floor with their residence on the second floor. I loved playing in his offices. The lower kitchen had deep turquoise shag carpet! My grandma had outrageous ball gowns as my grandfather was an elected official. My grandma loved to decorate; they had a lake house, and condominiums throughout Florida. Renovation was her passion; I caught her bug. My mom’s father was military and disciplined, management at General Motors; he was an artist and an architect. He was married to a Home Economics teacher. He passed when I was young so I spent summer time with his lovely wife. She had an Airstream that we took on short adventures.
She and my grandfather built miniature houses, and I would spend hours in their swanky mid-century living room looking into the small mock houses they enjoyed building together. Delightful! My dad’s father did Window Displays for a prominent Department Store in Muncie, Indiana; it was The Golden Age of Retail. He and his wife collected and sold unique, precious antiques, mid-century chairs, and Tiffany glass. They lived in an actual mansion in Muncie, Indiana – Italianate with a creepy attic, widow’s walk and all. These folks were fancy AF. While everything terrified me because it was so pristine, I absolutely loved it (during the day!!) They were avid golfers so there was always an air of aristocracy around them. My dad’s mom lived in a town called Farmland, Indiana. She was tiny. She lived simply. No excess. A quiet life.
Because we were artist-poor growing up, we had to make due. My parents are hippies. We fixed things. We did the work ourselves. We cooked. We always had great art, and my dad rummaged a lot. Finding treasures. We had houseplants and pets. Always music. I grew up in a working artist’s studio. It’s a wholly unique way to grow up. My brother, Colin Sherrell, was born when I was 11. Sweety angel, he’s a Sculptor now.
I bought my first house in downtown Glen Ellyn, IL. It was one of the first houses built in town. It was a wonderful time for me, fixing up this house. I fell in love with renovation. I fell in love with design. I studied Culinary Arts; I fell in love with kitchens. I visited France and Italy for the first time in 1998, and my life changed forever. My eyes were opened to an entirely new way of life. I felt perfectly at home in Italy; I didn’t want to leave. I moved to Nashville in 2001. While I loved the south, the ancestral area of my people, I craved Europe. I moved to Florence, Italy in 2002 and went back and forth before moving to New Orleans. In 2005, we lost our home to Hurricane Katrina. It took me many years to heal. We heal.
I am forever in love with home design and renovation. I flipped before flipping was flipping. Eventually, I started rehabbing spaces for clients. I did the majority of the work myself. I love doing light construction. This has given me a solid understanding of the construction process. Couple this with a love for design and a firsthand understanding of materials, I decided to dive into the deep end. I discovered that I can swim with the best of `em.
