Dublin artist Rosemary Mack says she has so many ideas, they keep her up at night.
“My brain just never stops buzzing,” Mack said. “With every new idea for a piece, I think I know what it’s going to look like, but then, it morphs into something better. It’s that creative process, of having that idea and taking it to some form or other – that’s what I really love.”
“The Art of Whimsy,” an exhibit on display at the Mariposa Museum in Peterborough through Oct. 4, showcases the work of Mack and Harrisville artist Corwin Levi.
Both artists are inspired by the humor and quirkiness of everyday objects. Mack creates comical objects and dioramas from dolls, miniatures, and vintage materials, while Levi incorporates the patterns and shapes from old board games into drawings, paintings and collages.
Mac says she has “always been a collector,” and that friends now give her objects they think she would find amusing.
“Sometimes I just see an object and think, I have to do something with that,” she said. “It started when I had to clean out my parents’ house. I just found all this stuff from my childhood.”
“The Art of Whimsy” exhibit includes Mack’s most recent work, “Kitchen Cabinet of Curiosities.”
“I’ve always been fascinated with old-time curiosity cabinets,” Mac said. “This piece was inspired by a quote I read in a book: ‘I didn’t want to waste my wild and precious life telling a grown man where to find the ketchup in the fridge.’ It’s my take on, the way I see the refrigerator, which is a little different from the way my husband sees it, with like a magic ‘what’s for dinner genie.'”
Mack can’t help laughing when she talks about her own work.
“My husband is a very good sport,” she says.
Mack, who is “a big fan of puns,” incorporates wordplay into many of her pieces. One recent piece, “Jailhouse Rock,” was inspired by an Elvis phone that someone brought to a Dublin rummage sale.
“I wanted to do something with more of a pun, and I had all these salt and pepper shakers, so there was ‘ a whole lot of shaking going on,’ and then in the cages, there are birds – jailbirds,” Mack said.
Another diorama, “Bachelor Husband,” was inspired by the long days of the COVID pandemic.
“It was so much togetherness, and there was no real escape. You couldn’t go out to dinner; you couldn’t go out. My husband and we got along really well during the pandemic – because we had to – but sometimes, I had these thoughts, and some of those thoughts are in ‘Bachelor Husband,” Mack said.
The diorama included a female figure in a tiny straightjacket and minuscule blue mask, and an unshaven male figure sprawled on the couch, one hand in a bag of potato chips, and missing one sock.
“This piece was very timely. I research all my pieces, and there was a lot being written about what people were going through during COVID at the time,” she said.
Mack says creating humorous art has been “a real gift” in her retirement years.
“Mostly, I just have fun,” Mack said. “It’s a great outlet for an overactive brain. I started doing this later in life, and I had nothing to lose. I am just so lucky, because it makes me so excited to get out of bed in the morning. I really do feel incredibly fortunate, because it makes me so happy.”
Levi’s collection of antique board games and game-inspired art complements Mack’s tongue-in-cheek dioramas and offbeat objects.
Levi says he was inspired by the many games his family played when he was a child.
“The games were our main family activity; that’s what we did,” Levi said. “When my mom retired and was getting ready to move, I just went to her attic and pulled a bunch of them down; she still had a lot of our original games. It just happened that she was getting ready to downsize just as I was starting to make art from games.”
Levi says the work displayed in “Whimsy” includes a series in which he “takes vintage gameboards and remixes them into new, impossible configurations.”
Because both Levi and Mack use old board games in their creations, the exhibit includes a display of vintage games.
“We decided it made sense to show the source material,” Levi said. “There are games for everything. There is a game of marriage, there are Christian games, Mormon games, we have the Flying Nun game. I like mining little bits of our collective experience and throwing them all back together.”
One of Levi’s works is partly inspired by “The Game of Life.”
“I always loved ‘The Game of Life;’ it’s so simplistic, and the idea was anybody could win. That work is drawn from hundreds and hundreds of tiles from all different games, because life is a lot more complicated,” Levi said.
Levi said Mack will let him know when an interesting game turns up at the Dublin Swap Shop, where she volunteers.
“I use the boards, and she uses the pieces. When I find one, I’ll set all the pieces aside in a bag for her,” he said.
Levi said he has been creating art from game boards for about three years. “The Art of Whimsy” is the first exhibition of his game art.
“My favorite thing about this exhibit is what a joy it is to collaborate with another local artist, especially someone who I have such synergy with. Rosemary is very creative and very original and very funny,” Levi said. “If you can’t have fun doing this, you are in the wrong business.”