Mary studied sculpture, installation art, and ceramics at the University of Texas, where she graduated with a bachelor’s in fine arts. She pursued her love of rituals and traditions that connect us to landscape across the globe in her decade-long career as a ceramic artist - from the hollers of Appalachia to the rocky slopes of the Phoenix Mountains in southern China. 

Following her desire to make a positive ecological impact, her love of plants, and her passion for connecting people to place, in 2022, she returned to school and earned her master’s degree in landscape architecture from the University of Virginia. There, she learned to translate her material, design, and spatial sensibilities cultivated in her art career to the living medium of landscapes. 

Mary is passionate about ecological health, landscape histories, ethnobotany, riverine dynamics, old-growth grasslands, spring ephemerals, and all things forest and flowers. She believes in the power of design to reintegrate our lives with the living world around us, helping realize a beautiful, interconnected, and sustainable future.