An Interview with Sherri Lawton

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Regrettably, our recent lengthy interview with Spark!’s chief creative officer proved entirely unusable due to Ms. Lawton’s still-impenetrable accent. We have turned instead to chapter three of her scandalously unauthorized autobiography, Feel My Exacto!, from which we have excerpted the now-notorious “garden boy” scene.)

GARDEN BOY: The pain, it is intense. But, oh, the pleasure!

SHERRI: Watch your hose, boy! You’ll extinguish the butane!

GARDEN BOY: And my ardor? Shall I extinguish that, too?

SHERRI: Your feelings are misplaced, garden boy. I pay you only to pinch my mums, to mulch my maidenhair, to hoe my bitterroot …

GARDEN BOY: And who shall tend to garden boy’s needs? Does not his foliage grow full? Does not his root go deep?

SHERRI: (eyes flashing like those of a cat gone mad with distemper, its feral brain swollen within its bony case) Ha! I tend to the needs of those greater than you! Or have you not heard of Chrysler! Jaguar! Oldsmobile! Denso…!

GARDEN BOY: Please … the Exacto … it is most sharp …

SHERRI: As sharp as my designs, garden boy! And as effective! Just ask the International Automotive Advertising Awards, the Caddy Awards, the International Association of Business Communicators, Print’s Regional Design Annual, How Magazine’s Self-Promotion Competition, American Corporate Identity 13, Gallery of Superb Printing Awards, AIGA Journal of Graphic Design, Autoweek, Automotive News, Automotive Industries Magazine, USA Today…!

GARDEN BOY: I grow cold … and yet … you enflame my cockles.

SHERRI: That’s just the butane, silly boy.