Upholstery
Functional Art
Textile Design
Mix Media Collage
Email
mbmcginnis@comcast.net
Phone
(847) 910-0354
Upcoming Events
Bayou City Art Festival, Houston, Texas, March 23-24, 2024
Gold Coast Art Fair, Amdur Productions, Chicago, June 15-16, 2024
Past Events
Red Dot Miami, Ralwins Art Gallery, Miami, Florida, December 6-10, 2023
Bayou City Art Festival, Houston, Texas, October 14-15, 2023
Gold Coast Art Fair, Amdur Productions, Chicago, June 17-18, 2023, Best of Category 2nd Place
Gold Coast Art Fair, Amdur Productions, Chicago, June 18-19, 2022, Outstanding Achievement Award
Dynamic Duos: Art of Collaboration, Peninsula School of Art, Fish Creek, WI, April 9 - May 28, 2022
Red Dot Miami, December 1 - 5, 2021
Gold Coast Art Fair, Amdur Productions, Chicago, August 2021
Glencoe Art Walk, Amdur Productions, Glencoe, IL, July 2021
Local Edition Artisan Market, North Bridge Mall, N. Michigan Ave, Chicago, May 2021
Local Edition Artisan Market, North Bridge Mall, N. Michigan Ave, Chicago, February 2021
Glencoe Art Walk, Amdur Productions, Glencoe, IL, September 2020
Gold Coast Art Fair (virtual), Amdur Productions, Chicago, June 2020
Wrigleyville Art Market, Amdur Productions, Chicago, July 2019
Underground Art Market, Salvage One, Chicago, December 2018
Skokie Public Library Art Exhibit, Skokie, IL, 2001
Mosman Art Prize Finalist, Mosman, New South Wales, Australia, 2000
Mary Beth's passion for art began at a very early age. Her mother recognized this, going the extra mile to find extra-curricular classes and projects. Once in high school, Mom worked with the administration to ensure MB was able to participate in the more advanced art classes. Her work was published in the high school's art publication.
As a high school All-American swimmer, she was recruited by and pursued athletics and academics at Indiana University - exhibiting the mathematic aptitude seen in so many artists, and ultimately graduating with a math degree and collegiate All-American honors.
Needing to fund her passion (and pay the rent), she advanced her career in tech consulting while keeping the creativity alive through decorative designs throughout her home with hand painted walls, intricate hand-paintings on cabinetry door knobs and hand painted floor cloths. This progress ultimately led to studies at the Art Institute of Chicago, formal acrylic and oil portraits and the selection as a finalist in the 2000 Mosman Art Prize exhibit in Australia, all of which provided confirmation that her investment and passion was headed in the right direction
Children led to a career change where she coached and built a competitive club swimming program, while still pursuing portrait painting with several commissioned pieces. During this period she wanted to extend her artistic passion to creatively mix and match fabrics in upholstery projects. Fortunately, the "furniture folks" tasked with the upholstery showed limited vision and judged her ideas and selections. Mary Beth expressed this frustration to her husband who took action and gifted her with an upholstery class, exposing her to the tools and materials needed to take on these projects independently - not a stretch given the wife and husband pair had designed and built their own custom oak cabinetry (another creative Mary Beth vision).
She spent a few years learning about fabrics and applied these discoveries to early work by combining colors, textures and patterns. Not willing to be limited to existing textiles, MB pushed the boundaries by getting her daughter's (Edan Scott, SCAD 2021) work printed on upholstery fabrics and applying them to projects - combining custom artwork, printed fabrics and furniture restoration.
Her collaborations with artists such as Elisa Boughner, Rashawn Taylor, Anderson Vickers, Armando Pedroso and Edan expanded her capability and vision, constantly seeking to do something truly innovative and unique.
Today you will find nothing like her work, from the collaborations with other artists, to the "Who Wore It Best" series, to the "Of Two Minds” series (for example, 'Georgia O'Keeffe meet Yayoi Kusama'). Mary Beth pushes beyond her own comfort zone - providing amazing and wonderful bespoke pieces that are functional from all perspectives: Art, Living, Sustainability. Her pieces are unique creations with deep artistic meaning and vision. All are constructed with the very finest fabrics and a joy to use and display. She searches for the highest quality chairs and personally recovers and rebuilds them by hand with painstaking detail, thereby preserving and enhancing the work of the designers and artisans who preceded her.