The Talented Mary Tiegreen
Mary Tiegreen is a risk taker of sorts. In 1979, she decided to forsake the security of permanent employment for the freedom to be her own boss. Now, thirty two years later, she has never looked back. Mary grew up in Chicago. After graduating the University of Iowa with a degree in photography, she moved to London where she stayed for two years. It was off to New York City after that. “I always wanted to come to New York,” she says. “For me, itʼs the center for the arts with wonderfully creative people like Milton Glaser who I took two courses with in the early 80s.”
Mary and her husband Hubert Pedroli moved from New York City to Palisades in 1993. “I discovered the area through my college roommate, Judy Zehentner, who lived here,” Mary relates.
Maryʼs creativity has materialized in all manner of ways from photography, writing and design to product development. “Iʼm in it for the adventure,” she says. “It doesnʼt matter the medium.” Her productive career has included design, product development and advertising for manufacturers such as Lipton Tea and Godiva Chocolates and retailers like Neiman Marcus and Bloomingdaleʼs where she designed a private label brand of gourmet food. She is currently working on packaging design for Tracie Martyn, a Fifth Avenue facial salon.
Books have played a large role in Maryʼs professional life. Fifteen years ago she and Jana Kalpen created a charming book called The Secrets of Pistoulet with fold-out letters, removable recipe cards and pockets and special vellum pages. It tells of the healing power of magical soups. Guests to a farmhouse called Pistoulet, nestled in the remote southwestern French countryside, arrive with various maladies and find themselves healed by soup. The book has been highly successful (a fifteenth anniversary edition is coming out this year). Dinnerware manufacturer Pfaltzgraff, taken with the bookʼs endearing illustrations, decided to bring out a collection of soup bowls featuring them. Dinnerware and gift items quickly followed. Impressively the collection is still in production with new pieces added from time to time. Other books, Villa della Luna, an Italian tale, and The Circle of Kindness, set in Ireland, followed.
The 1991 book MGM: When the Lion Roars, written by Peter Hay and designed by Mary Tiegreen, earned Mary an Art Directorʼs Award. It is illustrated with more than 700 full-color and black-andwhite photographs, posters, lobby cards, magazine covers and other memorabilia. “I traveled to L.A. to research this book. I loved going through the MGM archives and even got a chance to talk to Gene Kelly,” Mary relates.
Mary dreamed up a series of books called 1001 Reasons to Love …America, Golf, Dogs, Horses. Then came 101 Reasons to Love focusing on football and baseball teams, the Masters, NASCAR and the Kentucky Derby. She worked with former Palisadian Dave Green on many of the books in this series. In 2001 she worked on the book Women of Discovery with Palisadian Milbry Polk. Mary also designed Pots and Pans in Palisades, a cookbook of recipes from local residents that benefited the Palisades Community Center.
Maryʼs photography recently took center stage with oversized luminescent images of flowers and vegetables, many from her garden, printed on canvas and silhouetted against a black background. Mary says, “My love affair with growing things began when my husband and I moved to Palisades. Being a photographer and designer, I took the inspiration I found in the garden and began creating portraits of the many visitors to my garden—flowers, vegetables and a few curiosities that I discovered. I have been fortunate to find a sense of wonder here that I had misplaced long ago, when I was a child and everything was magical and surprising and new.”
In 2009, Maryʼs photographs were exhibited at the National Arts Club in Manhattan. Wonderland, Revisiting the Garden displayed forty canvases, the largest being a 40 x 60 inch image of poppies. Freelance Café in Piermont also had a show of Maryʼs oversized vegetables.
Mary currently has a line of greeting cards for sale produced by Recycled Paper Company and is putting together a series of note cards featuring her wonderful flower and fruit photographs. She is also working with local artist Marika Hahn on licensing Marikaʼs beautiful illustrations of birds and flowers. Mary Tiegreenʼs creative nature has led her down some interesting paths. Who knows where sheʼs off to next? Mary’s photographs can be purchased through her website tiegreen.smugmug.com or email Mary at tiegreen@mac.com.