By Megan Wehring
DRIPPING SPRINGS – People often say that art can be made of anything. For Molly McFee, she knows that to be true.
The Cypress Springs Elementary art teacher has kept a secret for a year: she won a national design competition that was a collaboration with Bounty and Brit + Co. Supporting emerging artists and designers, the competition asked contestants to design a graphic for a new paper towel collection with the ‘A Clean Fresh Start’ theme that recently launched.
“I originally entered because I was really interested in winning a scholarship to a course that Brit + Co has called Selfmade, [which is] an entrepreneur course,” McFee said. “When I saw that they were offering scholarships for that course, I decided to enter the contest because it’s a $2,000 scholarship.”
Over 300 people entered the contest and McFee was one of eight designers announced as a winner.
Designing a paper towel is something that McFee never imagined she would ever do.
“It’s kind of surprising. It feels a little bit random, but it’s a super cool opportunity and neat that my art is on something that millions of people will be using,” McFee said.
McFee has been teaching kids for a total of 15 years – while making art has always been a passion, she did not start creating as a form of self-expression until the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020.
“When COVID started, I was living alone so I just started creating art to fill my days,” McFee said. “In December 2020, I started exploring collage. My collages are pretty abstract; they reference nature but in an abstract way. I generally paint the paper with acrylic gouache, and I often add patterns. Making art is very therapeutic for me, so a lot of the pattern-making is very relaxing for me. … My art is pretty spontaneous, and I usually don’t have a plan for what I am going to do.”
While she is used to primarily using paper for her designs, the competition had her get out of her comfort zone to use a digital program.
“I took the shapes that I cut out of paper and drew them digitally,” McFee said. “Bounty gave all of the designers full freedom on how to design it. They gave a lot of freedom with constraints, I would say. They limited the color palette due to the process of creating paper towels.”
Creating art has now become McFee’s new favorite way to decompress after a long, stressful day.
“I often make art while I’m cooking dinner or when I’m getting ready for bed,” McFee said. “It allows my mind to go to a less stressful place and wind down. I’m finally in a state where I am just making art to simply create and very cool opportunities have come from just creating to create without trying to sell it to somebody or anything like that.”
