Margaret Kilgallen was born in 1967 in Washington, D.C., and received her BA in printmaking from Colorado College in 1989. Shortly afterward, the artist moved to San Francisco, where she took up surfing and immersed herself in the Mission District street scene. Kilgallen was influenced by the hand-painted signs and colorful murals she saw while biking around her Mission District neighborhood. Additionally, her early experiences as a librarian and bookbinder in the San Francisco Public Library helped the artist develop an encyclopedic knowledge of American folk signs, printmaking, and letterforms. Working on found and salvaged material and graffiti, Kilgallen created works that highlighted the beauty of everyday life.