Mary Johnson (born Rochester, Minnesota, 1964). Recycled stuffed toys titled "Pit Pat Pelt," 2023. Mary Johnson's work presents a gathering of cast-off materials reassembled intuitively and crafted with their material histories and narrative potentials in mind. In "Pit Pat Pelt," children's stuffed toys are the starting point for a process that results in new and transcendent life for materials that would otherwise be discarded, materials gathered from gift stores, gifted from friends, and collected off the streets in her neighborhood. Informed by contemporary sculptural and craft practices, the resulting works evoke, rather than illustrate, ideas of continuity, adaption, and change. This tiny rug references "Nightingale Rug," a larger work which was included in the M's "In Our Minds" (2021-2022), a street-facing exhibition celebrating art making as a form of research, improvisation, and play, featuring work by artists with and without disabilities. Length: 30 in x width: 20 in.