Margot Demarco is a Seattle-raised artist now based and building her craft in the heart of New York City. Her childhood was filled with the arts and community events such as parades. The 40-year-old artist continues to grow her craft at her Long Island City studio–I was lucky to get some insight.

A hot summer Monday morning was spent within Margot’s creative space. Welcomed at the entrance of her studio building, we spent a moment in casual chatter. A transition was then made through the building up to her studio. Entering Morgot’s studio, we are greeted by the loud high-pitch barks of her dog Tony, a Chihuahua, small but full of energy. Immediately, as I walked through her studio space, I noticed a recent project of hers, what seemed like a white window with a makeshift laptop keyboard protruding at an angle as a laptop would. “A Windows computer on display,” another guest claimed. She chuckled as she responded, “yah think?” You can already get a glimpse of her world, a world not confined by the walls of her studio, but one that is open, curious, and filled with subtle humor.

The piece embodied much of what makes her work distinctive: an everyday object transformed into something playful, strange, and open to interpretation.

To those who are familiar with her work, you know that she has a technique that is uniquely her own. She unapologetically translates her artistic childhood upbringing, beginning at around three or four years old, into much of her work. “A lot! Yeah, yeah. It’s the humor and I think it’s the scrappiness,” she says when reflecting on those influences, embracing a confidence in being silly. The playfulness is embedded in simple everyday objects that she then transforms into something head-turning.

That spirit of humor and resourcefulness has long informed her work. Earlier in her art college career, she took a class that led to entering a competition led by Walmart, focused on mass-produced eco ventures. She designed and proposed a clear plastic bean bag chair that the user could fill with their trash. The idea reflected her ongoing fascination with reuse and transforming the ordinary into something unexpected.

“I am a big believer that once something is put out in the world, your intent, you don’t get to control how it's interpreted,” she says.

“It should exist as a self-contained thing.”

For those who are not familiar with her work, she reshapes typical found objects, turning them into something refreshing and ambiguous. In her ethos, the work process is focused on the first two ‘R’s’ of the recycling process: Reduce and Reuse. She is anything but the status quo, a master of a personalized system and technique driven by “instinct and vibes.” This is very much seen in her studio, like the two clocks hanging, formed from an accumulation of trash, and a wooden bookshelf with objects infused strategically into it. It is a puzzle game that follows her own set of rules.

That same independence extends beyond the work itself and into how she presents herself professionally.

With her clientele growing, including work with well-known names such as Supreme and Zara, she maintains a subtle yet visible online presence. When searching for her work, it is hard not to notice that she does not have a working website presenting her work and framework.

“It died,” she says. The website hosting service shut down, taking her website with it.

“I don’t need to make a new one,” Margot says. “The web isn’t what it used to be. It’s no longer an open space.”

She explains that clients now come to her through DMs on Instagram, and that this has only strengthened her visibility compared to her now-defunct website. Like her work, her approach is guided less by convention and more by what feels useful, intuitive, and authentic to her practice.

Her work very much embodies a solution to a problem, filling cracks with the gold of silliness and scrappiness. Leaving her studio, I felt inspired and driven to create my own solutions to the world's problems around me.