Bo Shepherd: Interior Artist + Designer

Bo Shepherd is an interior designer. And a furniture designer. And an artist, construction worker, carpenter, entrepreneur, and any other mantle she needs to don as co-founder of Woodward Throwbacks, which makes sustainable furniture with reclaimed materials.

As an artist, Bo likes to push boundaries. So it’s not surprising that she arrived in this space via a surprising path. Bo moved from the East Coast to Detroit to study transportation design in college. After that, she took a job at General Motors, where she designed interiors for Chevy and GMC.

In her time off, Bo and her partner Kyle began biking around Detroit. That’s how they came upon illegal dump spots, where workers from demo sites or people from the community left things they wanted to dispose of. For an artist like Bo, these pieces were creative gold. She and Kyle began collecting items—an interestingly textured piece of stone, an old door full of character. Based out of their garage, they began making furniture and small decor for their own home from these reclaimed materials. This passion project soon became Woodward Throwbacks: a full-fledged business that Bo was running in her spare time from her corporate job.

She didn’t care that she was working so much. “I was just so excited to run back home and see, what materials are we coming across? What are we building next?”

She knew that what she and Kyle were doing with reclaimed materials was unique, and had promise. Woodward Throwbacks had evolved into furniture collections and interior design for residential and commercial spaces. They’d begun sourcing reclaimed material directly from contractors, demo crews, and community members. And they’d been selling to big stores like Nordstrom and Target right out of the gate.

“So I ultimately decided to leave the automotive industry, because I felt like I had so much more to give.” Now, Woodward Throwbacks has expanded from their garage into a 24,000-square-foot building that used to be a Dodge dealership.

Bo loves the diversity of her art process, from gathering materials, meeting with demo workers and contractors, and deconstructing materials to bringing them back to the shop and creating new pieces out of them. And she loves the spectrum of materials she and Kyle design with—not just wood, but also metal, acrylic, and stone.

Take, for example, the kitchen cabinets she and Kyle made out of metal panels from an old building façade. Or the intricate entertainment console made from deconstructed rental party tables. Or—one of Bo’s favorite projects—the whole collection of credenzas, bookends, coffee tables, and other pieces made with reclaimed materials from the old Michigan Central Train Station in Detroit.

“That collection is important to me because it reflects the resurgence Detroit is going through right now. And we’re also able to give back pieces of Detroit’s history to its people. Our model is ‘furniture with a story.’ We’re trying to share the legacy of the saved materials through each piece we make.”

It’s not just Bo’s designs that push boundaries. She’s pushing them just by being a woman in the arenas in which she works. She distinctly remembers one instance, early on, when she and Kyle were on a salvage mission of a demo site. “One of the general contractors said, ‘You work really hard, for a woman.’ I just kept my cool,” she said. She still hears comments questioning her strength—when she knows she’s stronger than many other people on the site.

“I’ve been in this field for ten years and it’s rare to see a woman deconstructing anything or even on the job site.