Lori McMahon / Artist

With more than 25 years of teaching, consulting and arts administration experience, the arts continue to be at the center of my personal and work life. I was born and raised in Iowa benefitting from an art education from elementary through high school. My middle and high school curriculum offered integrated courses where the teachers, and guest lecturers, tied the arts to writing, history, science and math. At the time I did not understand the impact it would have on my world view, my perspective on business, and my passion in education to help ensure others would have the same virtuous opportunity—wherein learning has meaning, purpose and critical and creative thinking challenges.

My work life includes public school teaching (K-12, colleges & universities), museum management and museum education, and directing arts education non-profits at the local and state level. Currently, I am the Business Manager for the College of Arts + Architecture at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In this position I am able to blend my range of teaching and arts administration experience together with my masters in business training to benefit UNCC’s newest college on campus.

I am married to Tim McMahon, who was my high school art teacher during my senior year. In that year I took my first school-sponsored field trip to Minneapolis where we toured the Walker Art Museum and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. This field trip impacted me dramatically. I was granted special permission to the Print Room of the MIA where drawer after drawer of Master artists along with those by contemporary artists were archived. With the help of a trained conservator I was allowed to handle and view works of my choosing. I especially remember lingering over the richly-etched print surfaces of German northern renaissance artist Albrecht Durer and the evocative color-field and abstract expressionist prints of Helen Frankenthaler and Franz Kline, both contemporary American artists of the New York School. I still feel the curved-back wooden chair in which I sat at the viewing table as I leaned back and exhaled, feeling so grateful that Museums—as cultural repositories–existed. I had a rush of emotional and intellectual awareness. It was at that moment that I understood the power of art and the importance of the creative capacities of artists and their impact on society and in history.

I currently live and work in Charlotte, North Carolina with Tim and have a high-school aged son.