Mary grew up in a home where her mother and grandmother both sewed. Her mother also knitted and crocheted, so playing with fabric began at an early age for her. Throughout her childhood and adolescence, she was always creating something. After a career as a speech therapist and learning consultant, she retired to pursue her dream job of creating art full time. When she's not sewing, she's dyeing fabric, creating her own fabric, or working in mixed media. She finds creating a mood through combined texture and color extremely addicting and therapeutic. She uses the ocean as a recurring theme in her work, as she finds its impact on every sense to be simultaneously evoking feelings of tranquility and exhilaration.

Her work has been juried into national shows and her wearable art jackets have won awards and toured the country.