Mary's Art Starts in the Garden

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Women Helping Women: A Recipe for Success
March 2024

While thinking back on my life journey, I realize that there were women along the way who stepped into my life and helped me change my course at critical junctures. I was raised in a very conventional household by strict European parents with very defined roles. By twenty years of age, I’d come to the pinnacle of my success with my prince charming of a hubby, a baby, and our own home. I had it all. The American dream. Contentment personified.
 
Until my beloved hubby rocked our little world by wanting out of our paradise… 

​I had no life preparation beyond anything except the happy home, two sons, a dog, and a white picket fence. I didn’t know any woman who worked, let alone one who was raising her children by herself. I honestly imagined my sons and I would starve to death without a man to work and earn the money to use in the supermarket. The windows in our home became a prison to me, keeping us silently and painfully apart from the world. My dark hopelessness led me on frightening trails of despair and death.​

​The emergency slowly passed. Life settled down a bit. But I was changed forever. I knew I needed to control the outcome of life for my sons and me. Then, I met Roberta at the YMCA Swim and Gym classes for our three-year-olds. She was a biology professor at Queens College and showed me I could get educated. Because of her, I went to college, got my degree in fine arts, and then got my divorce on my terms.

With confidence and a goal, I got a job at Barnard College, the women’s college of Columbia University, a bastion of feminism. This was an entirely new world of supportive women who opened a vast world for me.

Mary (L) and Roberta ~ 1977
Photo Courtesy: Mary Ahern

Mary's Office Just After Starting Her Own Business, Online Design (1995)
Photo Courtesy: Mary Ahern

​​Martha hired me as the office manager since, as she said, any single mother knows how to balance time and tasks. Since classes were free for employees, I studied programming in the School of Engineering, and Martha encouraged me to get into the then nascent field of computers. She also said to follow where a company makes its money, so I should go into sales or finance for my career. I took her advice.

And then another woman in my life stepped up to share some encouragement…

​Mary Ann had a Datsun 280 sports car, wore gold jewelry, and owned expensive houses. She showed me that women on their own can be wealthy. I determined that if I couldn’t be home at three o’clock with the milk and cookies, I would make the most money I possibly could. She showed me it was possible.

​I went into sales in the male-dominated computer graphics industry where I would earn money based upon my own efforts while combining my art, graphics, and computer backgrounds. And I did. Until I hit my head on the proverbial glass ceiling. So, I started my own graphic design/marketing business.
 
As an entrepreneur, I controlled how I used my time, benefited financially from my own skills and efforts, chose the types of work that intrigued me, and created and designed my own lifestyle.

At this time in my life, my journey would take yet another turn, one that has fulfilled my need to pay it forward.

​​Using the models the women before so wisely gave me, I am able to generously offer my experience to other women. Being an active member of the National Association of Women Artists (NAWA), an organization that has been empowering women artists for 135 years as the first women’s professional art organization founded in the U.S., I am in a position to share my business experience in sales and marketing with many other women to help them move along in their own journeys. Like having a delicious piece of apple pie with a scoop of ice cream and cherry on top at the end of an exquisite meal, I’m finally having my dessert. 

National Association of Women Artists (NAWA) 2023 New Member Induction Ceremony
Mary (Bottom Row, 4th from Right)
Photo Courtesy: Mary Ahern

​Like the women who helped me throughout my journey, I’m comforted by knowing I’m also helping other women in theirs. As Isaac Newton said: “…if I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”
 
My life is filled with gratitude for what I have experienced and learned through all of my endeavors. And now that I have the opportunity to share my skills and knowledge with other women in my community of professional women artists, I’ve come full circle. Life is sweet!

NAWA  Signature Members Juried into The BIG Picture Exhibition, Art League of Long Island
(L to R): Karen Kirshner, Eileen Shaloum, Mary Ahern, Susan Rostan, Pamela Waldroup & Constance Sloggatt Wolf
Photo Courtesy: Mary Ahern

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PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS:
A Virtual Visitor Had Me Contemplating My Lifelong Career in the Arts
My Dual Passions

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