Shelter Island Profile: Mary Theinert, making art and a place to thrive

Mary Theinert is an artist who grew up on Shelter Island, so in 2013, when she and her then-fiancé Jim Theinert, a teacher at the Shelter Island School, moved into a house on Menantic Road in urgent need of total renovation, they did it Island-style.

Mary’s father, Peder Larsen, helped dig and install a new well and sewage system. Mary termed her mother and sisters “fearless masters of demolition.” Doors and windows were ripped out and replaced with beveled glass and ceramic doorknobs, salvaged by friends from their own renovations.

Eric Kraus showed Mary and Jim how to re-tile the kitchen floor; and builder Matt Kast and his crew re-framed walls and installed siding, accepting cookies as payment.

For a year Mary and Jim lived in the midst of a barn raising, topping it off with a June 2015 wedding in their newly cleared back yard (thanks Dad!) that gave new meaning to the word housewarming.

“We all put so much work into the house,” Mary said. “We wanted to show it off.”

Born in 1987, Mary was the quiet middle child of five in a household she described as “loud.” She and her two older sisters, Meg and Emily, were well into their teens when younger siblings Elizabeth and Peder were born. “It was never quiet,” Mary said. “I used to lock Emily out of our room so I could play with toys by myself.”

Mary started school on the Island, went to elementary and middle school off-Island and came back for high school, graduating in 2005. Several Island teachers were especially important to her, starting with the recently retired and much-loved Frank Emmett, whose first kindergarten class included both Mary and Jim.

In high school, the late Art Pedersen was a beloved and effective teacher who Mary remembered for treating adolescent students with respect. “He talked to you like you were an adult,” she said. “Like you had a brain in your head.”

Art teacher Stephanie Sareyani gave her a mix of independence and the support she needed to nurture her artistic talent. “She let me go my own way but she was always trying to facilitate, to help me figure out things,” Mary said. With Ms. Sareyani’s help, she put together a portfolio that helped her get into the Savannah College of Art and Design, where she graduated in 2009 with a B.F.A.

Mary’s work is figurative, often with images of conventionally beautiful women she refers to as “objectified ladies.” The images are intricate, ornate and sometimes provocative, with themes of sexuality and violence.

In college Mary said, “I had a professor who kept asking me, ‘Honestly, what’s wrong with you?’”

Around the time she graduated from college, Mary’s work caught the eye of Alexis Martino, owner of Mosquito Hawk Gallery on the Island, who invited her to participate in a group show. Although she hadn’t decided to come back to Shelter Island permanently, “Roads were pointing back here.”

She began doing larger works, gradually getting deeper into the New York area gallery scene of shows and exhibits, and is currently working with Damien A. Roman, a fine art dealer who saw her work at the Ross School. He included her work at the Bridgehampton Art Market in 2014 and 2015, as well as a show called Group Summer at the One Art Space in New York that ran through August 2015.

She has also participated in ArtSI, the annual Shelter Island open studio event that is one of her favorite ways to show work, even when one year “people started showing up before I was dressed, so I spent the entire day in my pajamas.”

Mary and her husband Jim have known each other most of their lives. “Technically we met in church as toddlers, but I don’t remember meeting him,” said Mary. “I don’t really remember him from kindergarten either.” In fact, it took until the night of their high school graduation for Jim to ask her out for the first time.

When Mary returned to Shelter Island after design school, she and Jim were getting closer to a match. In May of 2010, Mary’s work was included in an art show at the Roger Smith Hotel in New York. Jim decided to bring a couple of their high school friends along to see Mary’s work.

“The Great Nude Invitational” was a self-explanatory show. “But on top of that,” Mary said, “because it just wasn’t nude enough, the people who organized the show had bare life drawing models present for anyone to sit and draw.”

This was not what Jim and the guys expected when they walked in. “I thought we were going to an art show,” one said.

“It’s art, guys,” Jim said. “It’s art. OK? Keep it together.”

The joy and promise of the summer of 2010 came apart when Jim’s brother, Joe Theinert, an Army first lieutenant, was killed in action in Afghanistan. “This wrecking ball came through our lives,” Mary said. “It threw so many things out of whack. I stopped painting. Everyone went off the rails in an emotional sense.”

Still grieving and hoping to restore balance and perspective in their lives, in 2011 Mary and Jim began an extended road trip. For a year they drove across the country in a white Volvo V70 they named the Moosewagon. “It was a great way to learn how to be partners,” she said.

Her father’s parting instructions to Jim were concise: “Don’t let the bears eat her, and don’t let the hill people take her.” No one wanted to ask who the hill people were.

Mary called her mother from the road regularly, telling her at one point, “Mom, I’ve had a shower every day, for the past two days.”

Out of money, they returned to the Island just as Jim, who had completed his Master’s of Education at Stony Brook University and was hoping to teach math, learned that an Island teacher was retiring.

His dream job had opened up. “We’d gone to all these different places,” Mary said. “When we were finally home we realized we didn’t want to be that far away.”

They were engaged on July 2, 2013.

Mary had packed a sketchbook in the Moosewagon and started working again at her art. During the period of home renovation and wedding planning, she did a series of four paintings in which “a lot of stress popped out … a lot of color, a lot of repetitive line and ornate things.”

As her life has grown more peaceful, her work is less edgy. “I was a really anxious person,” she said. “I had a lot of stuff pouring out of me in really odd ways. Now my work is somewhat gentler.”

The cycle of life on the Island suits Mary’s artistic nature. Summer is a time to be out, be busy and make money. Winter is when she can really get work done.

“The Island gives me the feeling of calm that I crave.”

Examples of Mary Theinert’s fine art and illustrations can be seen at marykt.com.