Before becoming a celebrated American furniture designer, Cheryl was a librarian, a fashion model and an advertising executive in San Francisco. When her father passed and left her an inheritance, she used some of it to design and make the furniture she could not find anywhere for her home. Working with the abundant Bay Area artisans and craftspeople brought her visions to life. That decision changed everything. Founded in 1986, her studio, Right Angle Designs, grew into something remarkable--a practice that treated furniture as a form of cultural scholarship, drawing inspiration from African and diasporic iconography, world textile traditions, world and art history to produce pieces of depth, utility and beauty.
Her Coin Encrusted Tudor Tables III & IV (1992) were her first Museum commission. They entered the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Design. Celebrity clients followed, including Robin Williams, Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, Danny Glover, the late, Judith Jamison, for her office at the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, among them. Museums confirm her place in art & design history. Furniture design acquisitions include SFMOMA, LACMA, the OAKLAND MUSEUM, the MINT MUSEUM, the SMITHSONIAN MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY & CULTURE, the BROOKLYN MUSEUM, and the MUSEUM OF ARTS & DESIGN (MAD) which purchased her Sculptures in the Form of a Necklace.
Today, the Artist/Designer, mentor and Black African Diaspora Art Advisor/Advocate is regarded as one of very few African American women to establish a national reputation for furniture design—a distinction that says as much about the industry as it does about her achievements.