Born and raised in Wisconsin, Mary has always been enamored of nature and, particularly, plants. Her art reflects her passionate embrace of the natural world. Water fascinates her with the never ending play of light and shadow. For many years her work has centered on flowers. Influenced by Anna Atkins, Karl Blossfeldt and the Carpe Diem painters, she has scanned leaves and flowers.
From the Milwaukee area she and her husband, Per L. Pedersen, began a period of cross country moves. She lived in San Diego and Toronto until finally settling in the Bay Area where she has been for the past nearly 30 years.
She taught black and white photography at Ohlone College and the San Francisco Photo Center. All those years of creating internegatives for the alternative photographic processes paid off. Cyanotypes and so on are contact prints and the negative needs to be the same size as the prints. She has also taught cyanotypes and gum prints at Kala Art Institute.
Kala has been instrumental for Mary’s development as an artist in the Bay Area. The Electronic Media Center allowed her to move from her work in alternative photography to archival digital prints. For someone based so firmly in 19th century photography, the digital age presented a huge challenge. Mary met the challenge head on by learning to create with a scanner. A large amount of time spent in the EMC developed her printing skills with large format prints. Many of her images have been printed very large scale (50 inches by 40 inches).
Recently, Mary has been creating shamanic medicine shields with cyanotypes. Her work toggles between alternative process and digital creations. Her passion for nature and concerns about climate change drove her to create protective shields for the earth and its inhabitants. The Dragonfly Medicine shield comes from her interest in the Navajo from whom she learned that dragonflies need pure water and are a very important symbol for them. The shields are embellished with embroidery and beading.
