Although her training and background geared her for a life of sitting alone in a studio inhaling paint fumes, southern-born fashion plate Sharon Spell longed for a life before an audience. She moved to New York City from Hattiesburg, Mississippi (via Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) after earning a BFA from the University of Southern Mississippi in Painting and Drawing. Her visual art has been described as possessing a "fine and distanced beauty that suggests abstract expressionism." It wasn't very long after graduation that she dove headfirst in the cabaret performances, putting her fine and distanced beauty onstage, spouting abstract expressionist humor that everyone can relate to.