Get Up Close and Personal with Margaret McMahon's Household Object Arrangments

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.”