Crossing the threshold into Sharon Kiley Mack’s house in Pittsfield is like stepping through a prism. From the street, the white clapboard exterior and spring-dull landscape do little to set her house apart from the other farmhouses in town. But the interior is a different story altogether. There’s a kaleidoscope of color, texture and life inside.

Her decor is a little bit circus, a little bit Oz, a little bit HGTV – and a big bit fabulous.

In the kitchen, a hand-painted sideboard is a burst of azure, scarlet and lemon. In the living room, an orange and red hassock adds an exclamation point to the otherwise khaki room. Her office used to have tangerine walls with a band of hot pink in the middle (imagine letting the Queer Eye guys loose on Dunkin’ Donuts and you’ll get the picture). She has since painted the walls a neutral shade, but a small mirror – its frame encrusted with Legos, Fisher-Price peg people, mah-jongg tiles and alphabet magnets that spell out “PLAY” – hints at the room’s vibrant past.

An upstairs bedroom pays homage to Monhegan, with soft blue tones and a table covered with a sea glass and shell mosaic of a seaside scene. And in her room, a gold-sequined swath of fabric filters the light through the window. Her “curtain” was once an evening gown worn by a drag queen.

“I don’t just see what it was intended to be,” Mack said. “I see what it could be.”

By day – and night, depending on fires, crimes or municipal meetings – Mack writes for the Bangor Daily News. In the off-hours (which, for a reporter, are few), she creates. She’s a painter, an artisan, a crafter and a designer. Her landscapes are a vivid, funky nod to folk art. But she also turns mirrors and old plates into mosaics, kitchen utensils into sculptures, and vintage soap dishes into votive candle holders.

“I love things, I love the shape and the texture and the color, not necessarily the purpose. Why does this have to be a sugar bowl lid?” she asks, picking up a piece of china that she plans to incorporate into a mirror mosaic. “I yard-sale. I collect everything. I have boxes and boxes and boxes.”

And it’s true. Dozens of clear plastic boxes line a shelf in her studio. Some are filled with toys. Others with bits of china. There are doll heads and figurines, Scrabble tiles and beads at the ready. And then there’s the back room, which is filled with furniture, more dishes (her friends leave stacks of chipped plates on her front porch), shutters and an old TV, all waiting for the right project.

She’s a rampant recycler who has the pack-rat tendencies of your average Mainer tempered with the keen eye of a decorator. Sometimes, people who pick things up on the side of the road end up with a house that looks like a flea market. Not Mack. Forget shabby chic. Her home just looks chic.

But things haven’t always been this way at Mack’s house. Not long ago, she found herself watching Oprah, when a guest came on and started talking about how home d?cor reflected the owner’s sense of self.

“I looked around my house, and my house was dark – dark green, dark brown, all these very subdued colors,” Mack said.

She had recently come out of a long, unhappy marriage, and she was trying to rediscover who she was. For some time, she had been painting beautiful but muted watercolors, but she had found it difficult to resume painting after her divorce. An art-teacher friend suggested she switch mediums, so she bought some acrylics and canvas and began to paint in her free time, which, as a mother of six was very limited.

After she got over the initial shock of red paint on white canvas, she began to play a trick on the viewer. In pencil, she would write out all the hurtful, unfair, awful things she had experienced and then she would paint over them.

“All the colors of my life were in these paintings,” Mack said.

And those colors slowly began to spill out over the canvas and into her home – from the soft yellows of the kitchen to the wild antique carnival game that doubles as her headboard, which pictures a clown whose nose lights up.

“I decided to use paint and use color to make me feel good and I really wasn’t caring what anybody thought,” she said.

In finding herself, she has in turn found a following. People love her designs – recycled or otherwise – so much that they’re willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a mirror. In one corner of her office, which doubles as her studio, sits a half-finished coffee table with a mermaid theme that was commissioned for a bed-and-breakfast in Rhode Island. But she’s not in it for the money. For Mack, there’s comfort in creativity.

“It is the color of my life,” she said. “If I don’t get to it for a little bit, it’s like a magnet.”

Kristen Andresen can be reached at 990-8287 and kandresen@bangordailynews.net.

Make a mirror

Sharon Kiley Mack collects everything from chipped plates to stray beads and game pieces to create her mosaic mirrors. Her advice is simple: “Just have fun with it. Don’t worry about rules. Don’t worry about what everyone else thinks. Worry about what matters to you.”

Materials: A concave picture frame so you’ll have a channel in which to apply the grout; a mirror cut to fit the inside of your frame (check your local hardware store); paint; “fillings” (i.e. marbles, broken plates, seashells, sea glass, tiles, doll’s heads, beads, game pieces, sticks, stones, etc. – it helps if they’re all of similar thickness); craft glue or a glue gun – don’t use white glue; grout.

Paint the frame to complement the fillings. Layer paint and “distress” with sandpaper for an antique look.

Replace glass with mirror.

Assemble your “fillings” – if you have plates, place them in a paper bag and break them gently with a hammer until they reach the desired size. Mack often places a taller piece, whether a sugar bowl lid, doll’s head, a small vase or a ceramic figurine, at the top of the mirror to add a bit of height. Lay them out inside the frame, then move them outside.

If you have fillings that are very small, such as beads, or very large, such as a vase or figurine, set them aside. Glue the rest of the fillings on frame. Let dry overnight.

Apply grout (Mack uses a rubber spatula, but do whatever feels comfortable to you) and wipe off with a sponge. While it’s still wet, press large and small fillings into the grout.

Clean mirror.