"I don't like bright, shiny things. I like to make things look as if they've existed for hundreds of years-- like they've been underground or under water and just got discovered."
Career
In the late 1960s, McKie joined a cooperative workspace called "NEw Hamburger Cabinet Works." There, she honed her skills through trial and error and met other well-known furntiture designers like Michael Hutwitz. In 1975, McKie began carving low-relief patterns of animals and plantlife into her work; the motifs began as purely decorative elements, but soon spread to the structural elements of each piece. This unique style, which used the mouths, tails and bones of animal forms to support surfaces, earned McKie significant recognitiion within her field. McKie's work in included in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.