Mary McCleary (born 1951) is a contemporary American artist currently living and working in Nacogdoches Texas, where she is Stephen F. Austin State University Regent's Professor of Art Emeritus.
[6] In a 2009 interview in The Houston Chronicle she states: "I was a print maker all through school, and when I got out of college and started teaching, my work shifted, because for the first time I wasn't accountable to a teacher.
Somehow the work evolved over a number of years, and I started gluing three-dimensional items onto my collages — cut-paper things that almost look like advent calendars.
"[8] McCleary has used a variety of materials, including paint, glitter, foil, wire, mirrors, nails, glass, and other objects on heavy paper, to create her collages.
Drawing my subject matter from history and literature, I like the irony of using materials that are often trivial, foolish, and temporal to express ideas of what is significant, timeless, and transcendent.