Born in the U.S.A.'s Pacific Northwest, Mary spent her childhood drawing paper dolls with her older sister Denise and sewing doll clothes for her Barbies. As time passed, she tried many arts and crafts - just enough to satisfy her curiosity and then moved on to something new. She received the "Best Female Artist" honor her junior and senior years in high school. She continued trying a variety of art forms but soon began to realize that although she loved to draw pastel portraits of people and animals, the 3 dimensional art forms were what she loved best. After buying a book on how to make teddy bears, to satisfy that curiosity, she got hooked and has been designing and making them ever since. Her passion for cats worked its way into her love for making bears. In 1984 she decided to combine a teddy bear and a cat, and the set "Katie's New Kitten" was born. This set was an immediate hit and quickly made Mary well known among bear artists. To Mary's knowledge, this was the first time a bear artist had combined a teddy bear with its' own pet to be sold together as a set. Since then Mary has combined a wide variety of cats, dogs and bunnies with many different bears. She has always tried to capture the look of a bear holding its' own pet with the love, pride and innocence of a child. Mary attended Disneyland's 1992 Bear Convention as an invited artist. She attended Walt Disney World's Bear & Doll Convention as an invited artist in 1993 through 1998.
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