I mentioned meeting the amazing sculptor Margot MacMahon at a Chicago Literary Hall of Fame event earlier this year. She impressed me with her insight into raising children and making time for Art. I have to admit that I didn’t know how incredibly talented she was, and the extent of her work that is collected internationally. I believe that as artists we encourage and challenge one another: our peers, our contemporaries, and those who come after us. Margot McMahon has definitely inspired me.
The first person to be featured is sculptor Margot McMahon, and it’s well worth your time to check out the blog and learn about this Chicago artist. I sincerely believe that McMahon is one of the artistic giants upon which the future will build their own inspired creations.
Here’s a taste:
My first impression of Margot McMahon’s sculptures was life. Like all great art, her three-dimensional representations give more than illusion—they allow the viewer to enter into the world of the subject,
suspending the knowledge that this is plaster or clay or bronze and seeing not only what’s there but what’s not. Her sculptures suggest motion.
Boy Gardener, by Margot McMahon
There’s hardly an artist better suited to creating our statue, and the fact that Margot has taken on this project will help make that moment special.
“I’m treating this award as a sculpture,” says Margot. “I want this to have a contemporary look, an active look. The gesture of the hand captured in the sculpture is in a thoughtful pause, the most active part of writing that gets us to the idea. The idea is what the writer is about, and the idea is what the reader is about.”
Valya Dudycz Lupescu has been making magic with food and words for more than 20 years, incorporating folklore from her Ukrainian heritage with practices that honor the Earth. She’s a writer, content developer, instructor, and mother of three teenagers. Valya is the author of MOTHER CHRISTMAS, THE SILENCE OF TREES, and the founding editor of CONCLAVE: A Journal of Character. Along with Stephen H. Segal, she is the co-author of FORKING GOOD: An Unofficial Cookbook for Fans of The Good Place and GEEK PARENTING: What Joffrey, Jor-El, Maleficent, and the McFlys Teach Us about Raising a Family (Quirk Books), and co-founder of the Wyrd Words storytelling laboratory. Valya earned her MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her poetry and prose have been published in anthologies and magazines that include, The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Kenyon Review, Culture, Gargoyle Magazine, Gone Lawn, Strange Horizons, Mythic Delirium. You can find her on Twitter @valya and on Mastodon.social @valya
