Melinda Crusher has been creating art her whole life; fostering a love of learning within herself and following a deep desire to understand the underlying principles of design that tie so many art forms together.
As a child, her natural talents for art and STEM were apparent. In her tweens Mindy created a family newsletter that she laid out in MS Publisher, complete with a logo and pieces and pictures sent in from family all over the country. She had been coloring detailed adult-level coloring books for years before picking up a book on drawing graphite portraits from the library and diving into fine art as she entered her teens.
Her father brought home a copy of Photoshop 7 that someone had left in an empty office at his work, and right around the same time she was developing traditional art skills she began to acquire digital art and graphic design skills as well; starting to create all kinds of print and digital media for local theater groups she was part of.
Ms. Crusher became the first woman in her family to graduate from college in 2011, obtaining a B.S. from the Ohio State University where she studied Textiles & Clothing and Fashion & Retail Studies, specializing in product development and creating multiple garments for the student fashion show her senior year. All the while she continued to grow her freelance graphic design business, adding Adobe Illustrator to her skill set and quickly becoming proficient in the program.
The economic crash in 2008 meant that Melinda graduated into a world where the full-time jobs she was seeking were disappearing into freelance contract positions, but this didn’t deter her - recognizing the opportunity to see how multiple companies operated she leaned into the freelance work as she continued to seek full-time, gathering knowledge and skills from every designer and team she had the chance to work with.
After working as a creative fashion designer, a technical fashion designer, and a graphic designer for six years, Mindy settled into a full-time position at Motionwear - a company making cheer, dance, and gymnastics apparel. The smaller size of the company and the team presented the chance for Mindy to not only maintain both her creative and technical fashion design skills as well as her graphic design skills but to grow them dramatically - she was soon finding herself responsible for start-to-finish design of garments including the production art and quality control for a long list of decoration types.
Winds of change blew through in 2019, when Motionwear began laying off employees as the company hit hard times, eventually closing in early 2020. A long-time lover of learning and science, Mindy saw her chance to try something completely different and she took it - enrolling in her local community college the same day she was laid off in September of 2019. Just a few months later she was accepted into Purdue University pursuing a dual degree program where she would receive a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and a bachelor’s in Physics.
Little did Melinda realize that, just shy of six months later, the entire world would be thrown into chaos as COVID-19 shut down everything. Unable to justify risking her health and that of her housemates, she put her new education on the back burner, trusting it would soon blow over. During the first few weeks of lockdown, Mindy bought her first iPad, outfitting it with Procreate, an Apple Pencil, and a few packs of specialty brushes. Her illustration and portraiture skills exploded to a new level, leading her to accept new commissions and open an Etsy store for custom work.
Culinary art has been part of Ms. Crusher’s life since she was eleven, so during the first year of COVID Mindy worked at the Meijer bakery where she decorated specialty cakes, capable of turning out up to forty intricately decorated cakes of all sizes in each five hour shift - tens more than others who held the same position.
It was during this same year that Mindy stepped into a bigger role at Nine Lives Cat Cafe - she had been hand-lettering their signage, menus, and chalkboards, and when the business was bought by new owners who recognized her talent, she was given even more creative projects to complete and oversee - she created numerous apparel designs, managed the cafe’s social media pages, and eventually rebranded the entire business for the new owners in 2021.
Later in 2021 the economy forced Mindy to leave the cafe to seek higher wages, and found herself working in the call center at the Indiana Department of Revenue. When her new supervisor caught sight of her working on portraits and illustrations on her iPad during training breaks, Melinda was pleasantly surprised to be asked to join the Spotlight Committee - a group of employees who worked to create fun, seasonal themes and activities for the office - and to create a team logo! Between her high performance in her role as a customer service representative and her artistic contributions to the department, Mindy received an award nearly every month she was employed, including official recognition from the commissioner of the Indiana Department of Revenue.
In 2022, as weeks of COVID turned into months and then years, Melinda refocused her plans for her future, returning to the art that relentlessly sought her out even after she left art-specific industries. Mindy is now actively searching for a full-time position creating art, contributing to a team she can continue to grow alongside. With decades of experience making stunning art in numerous mediums, and an analytical mind built to handle numbers, puzzles, and technical challenges, Ms. Crusher has been an invaluable part of every team she’s joined and is eager to meet the next group of artists she gets to work with!
Melinda invites you to spend time on this site exploring nearly a dozen different kinds of art, from detailed, illuminated calligraphy to whimsical, Disney-style portraits, all set apart by her love of detail and color. When you’re done looking - reach out! - she’d love to work with you.
Melinda lives with her roommate and their two cats, Fleur and Nibbler, and enjoys a wide range of hobbies, including astrophysics, writing, history, botany, geology, dancing, baking, and gaming. She plays multiple instruments, sings, and enjoys DJing all kinds of music, especially rap, disco, R&B, soul, funk, and vintage jazz.