52+: “Let’s go do stuff”: an interview with mixed-media artist Gina McKuen

Gina McKuen has long created mixed-media art for her own pleasure. She squeezed what was a passionate hobby in between her full-time work as a teacher and her full-time calling as a wife and mother to twin girls, who are heading into fifth grade this fall.

A series of big life events nudged her to reprioritize. The trauma of the pandemic, the death of her father, the death of George Floyd, plus the stress of teaching other people’s kids all got to be too much, and something had to give. In 2021, after 28 years of teaching, Gina resigned. Then, in 2022, her family moved from California to Minnesota.

It was on one of her first walks with the family dog in “real” snow that she felt called to launch Mahogany Snow Creations, a line of literary-based greeting cards and posters that incorporate vintage library paraphernalia. “It was that first winter, a long-term winter. I had never experienced what that was like,” she told me in an intimate phone interview. “Everything stops. Nature rests. People are not running around. Snow is falling; there’s no noise.” In that profound quiet, she realized she wanted to see if she could make a living creating art. That’s where “Snow” comes from.

“Mahogany” comes from her desire to honor the beauty of her Blackness as well as other underrepresented voices, especially women and women of color. Mahogany wood, she explained to me, is dark and expensive, and it can be hard to work with. “I likened this to my journey as an artist,” she said, musing about how artists are often hard on themselves by denying their gifts and downplaying their abilities. “I wanted to acknowledge the ongoing challenges creatives go through to honor their voices and their talents.”

Gina’s husband, Scott, inspired her with his quiet strength, telling her, “There’s no reason you can’t do this.” Photographer Christi Williams of Grinkie Girls pinup and boudoir photo studio, a close friend, was an enthusiastic supporter. “Christi never had any doubts; she didn’t allow me any time to doubt myself,” Gina said. “And Richard Schultz, a colleague of Christi’s, also a photographer, was the first person to tell me ‘You say you just want to do greeting cards, but I’m seeing pieces of art.’”

She launched Mahogany Snow Creations on Etsy in January 2023, and today her creations are also available in bookshops. “It makes me really pleased that my work spoke to people, especially pieces that clearly fill a need,” she said. She mentioned her Alice in Wonderland card, reimagined to appeal to Black and brown women, a fast favorite with Etsy shoppers. Her card that celebrates author James Baldwin reminds her of how she felt the first time she read his work, and she imagines the shoppers who purchase this card also had those feelings.

Her designs feature old-fashioned library touches, which remind her of her first, precious connections with a local public library. “That delicious feeling of finding a book you were looking for, getting your first library card, going through the card catalogue,” she said with a deep warmth in her voice. “Organizing books and making them available to us who need them—that’s a form of art!”

With a growing family and a growing business, finding time to create art has been her biggest challenge, but she perseveres. And she offers real-life advice to other creatives who dream of sharing their passions with the world. “Get off your butt, even if you don’t know what you’re doing,” she said, mentioning she’s learning as she goes. “And, if at all possible, find someone who loves you, to push you—or even pull you—as needed. I had a lot of pullers, people who said ‘You’re done talking. You can feel nervous, but let’s go do stuff.’”

See more of Gina’s art on Instagram, at her Etsy store, and on the Mahogany Snow Creations website.