Katie Mary

Born To Be An Artist

Born in New Zealand then moved to Virginia, Katie grew up under the huge shadow cast by the 56 foot monumental sculpture, Vulcan, the god of beneficial and hindering fire, representing the city’s steel industry in the last two centuries.  She was regaled with haunting stories of molten metal involving her great grandfather fictitiously falling into the caldron of molten steel while inspecting the quality.  Innovation runs in the family as Mary invented the by-product coke oven recycling this product into energy and saving African American workers’ lives from the deadly fumes.

Hidden in Katie Mary’s DNA was innovation and primordial molten metal waiting to be discovered.

Involved in the arts of dance, set design, piano, choreography as well as being a champion athlete, Katie’s mother decided to help her harness these many talents into focus and drove her to the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida, to see its art program.  Looking at her first European life-size sculptures surrounding the grounds and atop the grand columns and arches, Mary expressed her overwhelming inspiration to her mother:

“If I can create just one of these then my life will have been worthwhile.”

What Mary did not understand then, but would come to realize a few short years later, is one was not enough.

Internationally Educated in Design and Intercultural Dialogue

After graduating from Los Angeles City College LACC, Mary aided by an academic scholarship went to the University of California at Los Angeles, UCLA, where she graduated with a degree from Dickson Art Center in Sculpture, Painting and Design. She continued on in UCLA’s Graduate School of Education.

Feeling the graduate program was not addressing her goals and desires, she moved to the international sculpting community of Pietrasanta, Italy, snuggled at the base of the Apennine Mountains where Michelangelo’s Marmo di Bianco Puro was quarried 500 years earlier for his Pieta and David.

Sculptures Inspired By Dance

“Dancers can hold a pose, don’t complain, know when to shake out their bodies and resume the position perfectly.”  Through dance and the years of reflection in the mirror in the dance studio, Mary intrinsically inhaled the molecular understanding of human anatomy in movement.  It is love of this uniqueness, revealed in each individual’s body transferred into her sculptures, that excites and continues to fascinate Mary and her Collectors.