Maribeth Coffey-Sears, an LT art teacher, has shown her pieces around the world, pieces that were inspired by her emotional journey of reuniting with her birth mother to find more information on her son’s rare genetic disorder.

She started her professional artistic career following college, showcasing and selling her artwork at the ARC, the oldest cooperative gallery in Chicago. However, she has also enjoyed teaching and seeing the artistic capabilities awaken in her students.

“Even with just a short time in her class, her experience has really benefitted my art,” ceramic arts student, J.D. Fallon ‘16 said. “Whenever there is something I don’t like about my piece she always knows just how I can fix it to make it the way I wanted it to look.”

Coffey-Sears received her bachelors at University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and then worked for her masters at National Louis University. While working on her doctorate at Northern Illinois University, she became ill and was forced to take a year off.

Only a few years after her biological brother died due to a rare liver condition, her son, Dylan Coffey-Sears, was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder with symptoms similar to type one diabetes, but did not react the same way to treatment. The doctors told Coffey-Sears that her son’s disorder was also the source of her sickness, and encouraged her to find her biological mother to find out more information on her family lineage.

“When they found [the genetic disorder] was the source of my illnesses too, all of the pieces of the puzzle were coming together,” Coffey-Sears said. “Only five families in the world have the same genetic condition, so it’s very rare. That is one of the reasons the doctors wanted me to find my birthmother.”

She began the long search to find her birthmother and answers to these medical mysteries. Coffey-Sears ended up meeting her mother and found out valuable information about her family line. She also met her 12 other extended siblings who remain in touch with her today. This life-changing experience will continue to influence her artwork for the rest of her life, she said.

One of her larger sculptures at the ARC gallery captures her prayers for her son to get well. It focuses on Dylan in a sarcophagus wrapped in gold, because he is precious to her, she said. He also has an Indian headdress covering his head, symbolizing their Indian grandparents. In addition to that, he has bindings around his body in reference to the intricate genealogy that Egyptian families were known for recording.

“I love doing research,” Coffey-Sears said. “I think that really supports my artwork. It comes from a place with history.”

Her ultimate aspirations are for a museum to buy her work for their collection and to impact someone through her art.

“The whole essence about my desire to be in a museum collection is that I made work that’s worthy of that,” Coffey-Sears said. “That peers have said this should be kept. This is something that our culture cherishes, and for me to be able to make something that could qualify on that level; that’s important to me.”