Artist exhibits work in pop-up show

Published 7:53 am Wednesday, November 25, 2015

If a pack of porpoises is called a pod, hippopotomi called a bloat, cats a clowder, foxes a sloth and bears a skulk, then what might a collective of illustrations for a new children’s book be named? For island artist Mary Rothermel, they might well be dubbed an exhibit, one that will be held for one night only on Tuesday, Dec. 1, from 6 to 9 p.m. at VALISE.

Rothermel has been a gallery artist for 30 years, creating art furniture in collaboration with Tom Northington and painting landscapes. When her sister, Lee Clancey, asked Rothermel to illustrate her children’s book, “A Bale of Turtles,” Rothermel knew it would be a departure from her typical work.

“The illustrations (have) been a new direction from my fine art,” she said. “The designs needed to include up to three different types of animals per page. I tried to include something for the careful observer to find in each painting that a child could relate to, like a whale with a lunch box or ponies playing hopscotch.”

Clancey, a former teacher, a new grandmother and lifelong lover of words, chose to write about the nouns given to groups of animals — like the book’s title, “A Bale of Turtles.”

The pop-up exhibition is open to the public, perhaps even an audience of squid.