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Boston Globe

When a house is not a home (instead, it's a sculpture)

Day's sculptures are full of riddles. She's built tiny machines, such as 'Convertible Pile Driver,' in which cranks crank and pulleys pull. It, too, is more than it seems: It converts to a guillotine. 'They're facsimiles of something being made. Something being fixed. Something being reconsidered. Something being questioned,' Day said. 'They're on the way for something to come into being.' Advertisement Jennifer Day, 'Crumblehome.' Lane Turner/Globe Staff Where to find her : Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Age : 'I am 69-and-a-half, but I like to say that I'm 70 so I'll get used to it.' Originally from : Paxton Lives in : Newburyport Making a living : Day, now retired, was an art professor at Northern Essex Community College and Colby-Sawyer College. Jennifer Day, "Rushmore Reject." Lane Turner/Globe Staff Studio : 'I work on the third floor of my house in a bedroom that's very small. Low ceiling. Terrible light. But I love it.' How she started : Day started crafting miniature replicas as a child. At 11, she built an antique butter churn. She has converted that same tiny churn into a sink for 'House.' 'I had dollhouses that I inherited from my mother. My grandfather had made some of the things for that,' Day said. 'But the furniture I made — and I have a whole set of it — that was always on a special shelf to display and not to touch, not to play with. They were too fragile.' Advertisement 'I was always making something,' she said. 'It was a way of life. If I wanted something, I made it. If I needed something, I made it.' Jennifer Day paints a plinth as she installs her show 'Scaffold' at Bromfield Gallery. Lane Turner/Globe Staff What she makes : The verisimilitude draws viewers in. 'They go, 'Well, I know that's a boat. But what's that thing hanging on it for?'' Day said. 'I want to subvert it. Particularly something that's cute, small, likable, accessible.' 'I sneak stuff in between the layers,' she added. How she works : It begins with materials: an old Vietnamese hat, a bamboo shade found on the side of the road. 'The materials tell me what they want to be,' Day said. Then, 'A lot of measurement. A lot of math. A lot of angles.' Finally, she sets to work. 'I sit on a milking stool at a very, very low coffee table, and on the coffee table I've got my scroll saw and my bandsaw. I've got my glue gun. I've got all of my tools and my drill.' Jennifer Day, "Convertible Pile Driver." Lane Turner/Globe Staff Advice for artists : 'You are the only person that really knows what's important. Other people will take from [your art] what they want. Don't make it for them. You'll be wasting a lot of time and a lot of personal growth if you do.' JENNIFER DAY: SCAFFOLD: Construction Sites in Miniature At Bromfield Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave., through July 27.