This piece, which was completed for an illustrative figure drawing class, was a stylistic deviation for Mary, but it is one she enjoyed very much.

Using at least two people, she was to create a scene that fused elements of real life with those from her imagination while using lots of color to give the finished piece a distinct sense of character.  (This meant she had to shed some of the rigidity she developed in previous graphite-based assignments.)  With gouache, Mary rendered her younger siblings from life, while mixing furniture from her home — the record player, its cabinet, and the chair — with other elements included purely for her own enjoyment.  The orange tree, lamp, rugs, and framed bamboo were entirely imagined, and so was the background, though Mary did draw inspiration from Alex Katz’s 1965 Cocktail Party for its depiction.