Margo Macartney renewed a childhood interest in clay in the late 1990s.  She had grown up next door to a friend whose grandmother was a sculptor, and who left buckets of clay for her grandchildren and the other children in the neighborhood. Nice weather in Southern California provided many summer days with the neighborhood children covering the porch with clay sculptures and coil bowls, none of which were ever fired, but constantly recycled back into the buckets.  Margo also took some classes at the Pasadena Art Museum in Southern California as a child, and spent most of her life unofficially doing art work: sketching, drawing, painting, but keeping nothing.

Why she went to law school instead of art school remains a mystery, but at one point, she began taking sketch books to court as a lawyer, sketching the courtroom.  Again, lost.  Someone actually bought the sketch books at a yard sale.

While still working in Bisbee AZ, she noticed a Saturday ceramics class available at Cochise College, Douglas campus.  She signed up, and the rest is history.  She studied first with Peter Chartrand, and continued with Toni Sodersten, Manny Martinez, Mike Garino  and Tate Rich. After she retired as a full time attorney, she continued her work in the arts, primarily clay.

The clay work includes work at the wheel, hand building, and  sculptures.  She also does painting and printmaking and photography.