June 6, 2020

Get Up Close and Personal with Margaret McMahon’s Household Object Arrangements

Margaret McMahon copes with sheltering in place by getting inventive with household objects.

Here’s her take on the project:

“It came to me when I was standing in my laundry room looking at my rubber gloves. Being home so long has forced me to become hyper-focused on every little thing around me, so I got the idea to create a color board with just what I have. I’ll find one random thing—a T-shirt from a South Africa trip, lavender from a friend’s house in France, a spaghetti pottery dog from a vintage shop upstate—and continue to collect items in a similar palette throughout the day. It often starts with a book—I’m a huge reader, my sister calls me the queen of self-help books. Then I obsessively arrange and rearrange the objects—I’m all about order—on a 24-by-36-inch piece of foam core and shoot them with my iPhone 11. So far, I’ve done 18 of these. I’m good with balance and composition, something I honed from making client presentation boards as a young designer. Now as senior vice president and global managing director of Wimberly interiors, my responsibilities are mostly management-related. I crave that interaction in the studio. Forming a color story and sharing my life—it’s the creative outlet I really need.”

Read up on Margaret McMahon’s Hello Cindy! chat here

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