The Plumber, Triumphant

Michelle and I put together a piece for Gallery1988’s latest show, Back To 1985. In a show that celebrates notable pop culture events and media from 1985, there’s a lot to choose from: Breakfast Club, Back to the Future, Return to Oz, Teen Wolf. All iconic. But we went with the US release of Super Mario Bros on the Nintendo game system.

Full disclosure, I never owned a Nintendo system. I never played any of the games that feature Mario. I never saw any of the Super Mario movies. I have absolutely no idea what a Koopa Troopa is. Still, I like a good underdog story. And Mario the hero plumber fits the bill.

But the primary reason we chose Mario over Marty McFly or even the gooey Tarman zombie from Return of the Living Dead was the fact that Michelle has been pushing for a Mario project for years. Not for any particular show or client. But just because she’s always wanted to create a felt sculpture of Mario.

She loved the games as a kid, played them constantly, and that plucky little plumber holds sentimental value to her. I don’t see how any of that trumps my love of a flesh-dripping zombie, but sometimes you lose the coin toss.

So after we threw around some design ideas, we landed on the iconic visual of Mario leaping into the air to punch one of those little mystery boxes in the game. And since the Mario figure himself was going to be made from felted wool — a material rife with texture — we decided the concept was to take something initially two-dimensional, created from smooth digital pixels on a flat glass screen, and bring it out into the real world where it would have depth, weight, and texture.

While she worked on the figure, I worked out how to create a wooden crate to serve as Mario’s mystery box. That was the easy part. Lasers, glue, paint. But how to get the whole thing suspended above a base was still, you know, up in the air. We thought about hanging the box and figure from a hook, sort of like an ornament stand. But then he might swing like a pendulum if an errant breeze blew through. Next, we picked up an assortment of clear acrylic rods, thinking we could mount him on a simple base. But even with a see-through mounting rod, we’d have had to insert it in his posterior, and that still might read as visually awkward.

So I went back into AffinityDesigner to recreate the digital rock landscape that scrolls by while Mario runs through the game. I figured if we had a nice, heavy base as counterweight, we could mount Mario on an angled steel arm that slots into his torso from the back. It would be subtle, hopefully, and from some angles, virtually invisible. Turns out it is.

We called the piece The Plumber and it’s currently in Gallery1988’s Back To 1985 show. I like the way it turned out, and it fits the show. And even if I never learn what a Koopa Troopa is, or who exactly imprisoned Princess Peach in the first place, or even what’s hidden in that mystery box, Michelle is thrilled that we finally worked on a Mario piece together. And that means I’ll get to work on a Tarman zombie soon.

See the entire Back To 1985 show at Gallery1988’s site, and see our process video for the project at the link below.