Email: mail@betsystreeter.com
Instagram: @betsystreeter
Twitter: @betsystreeter
Paypal: paypal.me/betsystreeter | Venmo: @betsy-streeter
Hello and thanks for visiting! I’m Betsy, an illustrator/cartoonist/artist with past lives in film production, software, design, information architecture, and video games. I’m currently illustrating a history of the bicycle and developing a series of illustrations/prints for California Shakespeare Theater.
I grew up in the East Bay of San Francisco, California, with the Raiders and the A’s and Ray Guy and Kenny Stabler and Hendu and Dave Stewart and Jim Plunkett and all those fellows. I did all the sports growing up. I had two athletes’ posters on my wall, Bjorn Borg and Pelé. My hometown is the site of a national laboratory, so everyone’s parents were actual rocket scientists or what have you – or, they were ranchers or vintners. And, everyone was musicians and photographers and artists. My parents had a theater company that operated out of a one-room schoolhouse. My dad is a pianist, and we were not to watch too much TV because it made noise when he was trying to play. I knew all the pieces he played down to the note, and I knew they were Chopin, Schubert, Scriabin, Beethoven, Bach. But I couldn’t tell you whether it was an Étude or a sonata or what. I didn’t realize until later I had grown up in a town full of neurodiverse, creative people, and what a unique gift it was. There were rehearsals in the living room and impromptu arts festivals and I did my high school FORTRAN homework on a Cray (considered a supercomputer at the time, these days’ it’s probably an iPhone) by way of a teletype with tractor-feed paper. I remember visiting the lab on Family Day (my dad worked there as a systems programmer), and being enthralled with a role-play game running on a teletype sitting in the hallway. The computer room with all the donut-shaped Crays was used to film scenes in the movie, Tron.
At some point I started drawing cartoon panels, and if you look really closely, one of my cartoons is taped to the cabinet in Paul Giamatti’s office in the movie, San Andreas. Another one travels around with the Smithsonian Astrophysics Observatory’s traveling exhibit on black holes. At least one of my drawings is tattooed on a person. I’ve gotten to put art on album covers, books, clothes, magazines, presentations, people, large walls, refrigerator doors, and who knows what else. Making art that delights other people is the good stuff.