Laura Lee McCartney

Laura Lee McCartney, PhD

Laura Lee McCartney (she/her), Ph.D. is a curator, artist, researcher, teacher, and mother, currently working as Assistant Professor of Art Education, at Texas Woman’s University. She has worked as a museum director, curator and educator, and has taught elementary, middle, and high school art in public schools in North Texas. In her arts-based practice, McCartney explores spaces to unravel moments of caregiving—between caring and “uncaring” for the things we hand down, especially as mothers and daughters. McCartney’s arts-based dissertation, Unpacking Self in Clutter and Cloth: Curator as Artist/Researcher/Teacher, uses feminist poststructuralist and performativity theory to allow for unpacking curator identity constructions within art education through thick autobiographical narrative. Her work resides in the tension between caring for objects and ideas with caring for loved ones, visitors, educators, and students as a curator/artist/researcher/teacher. She seeks opportunities to deconstruct material culture as a means to trouble the practices of collecting, creating, and curating as living curricula and pedagogies within art education.

McCartney earned her B.A. in Art History, with a minor in Women’s Studies, from Southwestern University at Georgetown and both an M.A. and Ph.D. in Art Education at the University of North Texas. At UNT, McCartney served as Coordinator of Art Education Student Teaching and Field Placements, Art Education Teaching Fellow, Graduate Research Assistant at the National Center for Art Museum/School Collaborations, the specialty program of the North Texas Institute for Education on the Visual Arts, Acting Director of the Texas Fashion Collection, and recipient of the Priddy Fellowship for Leadership in the Arts. She also earned the Certificate in Art Museum Education and the Certificate in Arts Leadership from UNT. Currently, McCartney coordinates the TWU undergraduate Art Education program, supervising the art education student teaching and field placements with the College of Professional Education, and serves as the faculty advisor for the TWU National Art Education Association (NAEA) Preservice Pioneer student chapter.  

APRON STRINGS, 2016

In my arts-based practice, I explore spaces to unravel moments of caring and “uncaring” for the things we hand down as mothers and daughters. There is a tension between caring for objects as a curator and caring for objects as an artist/researcher/teacher. For this piece, Apron Strings, (2016),  I (re)turned to my great-grandmother’s apron that was saved in an old family trunk for over a century. Originally, I thought this piece was not significant or worthy to keep or display because of the many ways it had not been cared for—it was stained, ripped and covered in moth holes.  However, in my dissertation journey, I was able to re/consider family threads I inherited and use them as sites to remember and feel my own preservation and decay. The apron became a site for me to connect my motherhood story to generations of women in my family who, like me—saved dress stories for their daughters.  The apron became a space for me to cut, rip, tear, and “uncare” in order to better care for self in my story of becoming.  My daughter was born under great distress in an emergency caesarian delivery at 25 weeks old—weighing only 1 pound, 11 ounces. Much like this old apron packed into a trunk, I had packed my pain away so I would not retrace or relive the trauma. In my inquiry, I was able to reimagine the scar tissue of my soul in new ways.  I measured the length of the scar I still carry on my abdomen from the day I was literally opened into motherhood.  I laid a large red thread down the front of my great-grandmother’s apron to mark the distance and the wound on the fabric.  I used vintage black thread from my great-grandmother’s sewing basket to stitch traces of the 37 staples that were used to secure my incision. I frayed the red wool in between and in-between the stitches, undoing its edges. I opened myself one-stitch at a time. Finally free. I ran my hand over the fibers, and thought about the function of the cloth:

For apron strings, can be used for other things
Then what they’re meant for and
You’d be happy wrapped in my apron strings
You’d be happy wrapped in my apron strings.

Apron Strings (1988) by musical group, Everything but the Girl

Recent Works

Laura Lee McCartney poses with the NAEA Preservice Pioneers, an Art Education Student Organization, during their first meeting

Laura Lee poses with the NAEA Preservice Pioneers, an Art Education Student Organization, during their first meeting

NAEA Preservice Pioneers, an Art Education Student Organization Meeting

Laura Lee McCartney and students stand in front of oversized paper mâché art supplies

Page last updated 11:00 PM, May 14, 2025