Our Palate to Palette series continues to inspire unique connections between wine and art while supporting the work of local artists. Currently on display through June 3rd, you can visit the Muscardini Cellars tasting room to view our featured Spring artist’s work on display and her Bud Break: Nature as Teach Explores Emergence exhibition.
Through layered gesture and shifting light, these works reflect nature’s quiet instruction to the artist, that growth begins in darkness, and becoming is an act of persistence. These paintings hold the threshold between what is buried and what rises, echoing the cycles that shape emotional, physical, and the historical landscape of an artist’s creative life.
Mary Lee Rybar is a multidisciplinary artist based in Sonoma County, California. Working across painting, printmaking, sculpture, and mixed media, she layers varied materials to create richly textural abstractions drawn from memory and photographic observation. Her verdant yet nuanced palette and expressive mark-making evoke her deep connection to nature, ecology and the quiet poetry of everyday life.
After attending university and later teaching at the American School of Paris, Rybar spent over three decades as a flight attendant, a role that nurtured her love of design, travel, and storytelling. Parallel to that journey, she founded Hunter Designs, producing custom hand-painted textiles for select retailers. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, Museum of Craft & Design SF, and Marin MOCA Commission. A Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant recipient through Vermont Studio Center, Rybar maintains an active studio practice focused on printmaking and painting while expanding into sculpture and public-facing projects. Her public art has been featured by the Mill Valley Arts Commission in Marin Magazine. Today, grounded in her Sonoma studio, she continues to weave experience, curiosity, and reflection into her work—using every chapter of her life as material for her art.
You can view more information about the artist and view her portfolio here.
On Sunday, April 12th, from 2-4PM, we invite you to join us for artful conversation with featured local artist Mary Lee Rybar. Light charcuterie will be provided and Muscardini Cellars wine will be available for purchase.
As our Palate to Palette program continues to evolve with each featured artist’s creative approaches to explores connections of art with wine, be on the lookout for updates around our new Outside the Artist’s Studio where our current artist will hold open artist chat hours at our tasting room!