The Feral Housewife’s quirky-cool collages, meticulously culled from vintage magazines and other ephemera, are joyous love letters to domestic bliss and aero design.
This article first appeared in Traverse Northern Michigan. Find this story and more when you explore our magazine library. Want Traverse delivered to your door or inbox monthly? View our print subscription and digital subscription options.
Northern Michigan artist Mary Beth Acosta spends most of the year in a time capsule she calls the “Cartoon Cottage and Appliance Museum.” Her Northport kitchen, a curvy 1950s Youngstown Steel modular unit with rounded corners, features harvest gold appliances from the ’60s. And when she gets dressed up to go out, says the wife, mom of two and grandma of four, “I have to call up my courage to walk out the door,” because she is in full vintage regalia. Cat-eye glasses, 1940s dress, hat, gloves. You get the picture.
Photo by The Feral Housewife
Photo by The Feral Housewife
Photo by The Feral Housewife
“I love to keep the old things alive and the sensibilities going,” says Acosta, 68, aka the Feral Housewife, whose collages, in kind, depict women and cars from the 1920s to 1960s. She particularly loves the 1950s, part of which she experienced growing up in Detroit when automotive design was a celebrated art form and women still wore hats and gloves downtown. “It was so hopeful then,” she recalls. “Only the dinosaurs were extinct.”
Acosta’s collages were recently featured in a several-month solo show at the Glen Arbor Arts Center and her works have also been exhibited at Traverse City’s Dennos Museum Center.
Find more of her work at feralhousewife.com.