• Pamela Polston ©️ Seven Days
• "Blessed Be Bob"

The title "Hail Mary, Full of Glass" is the first indication of Mary Tapogna's irreverent sense of humor. Wordplay and visual puns are sprinkled throughout her exhibition of mosaic works at the Northeast Kingdom Artisans Guild's Backroom Gallery in St. Johnsbury. A circular portrait of her namesake is titled "Round Yon Virgin." A cross with a bovine at its center is, naturally, "Holy Cow."

A particularly punny piece, "Wok With Mary," is in Tapogna's mosaic cookware series. A petite statue of the Virgin stands in the middle of the pan, seeming to admire the lovely mosaic pattern surrounding her. And no, this cookware is no longer functional — though it would make a nice font for holy water.

Tapogna was born in Springfield, Ohio, the eighth of nine children, and grew up attending mass. "I've always been inspired by the iconography," she said. "I would sit in church just staring at everything." She described her current religious affiliation as "spiritual."

In 1990, after earning a degree in photography at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, Tapogna headed to Portland, Ore.; she worked a variety of jobs, including shooting for the daily paper. She began "dabbling in mosaic arts" — at first making frames for her photographs — and eventually decided to open a studio/gallery she named Hail Mary. For 12 years it was an arts and community fixture, she said, and during that time she cemented her reputation for making both quirky and increasingly sophisticated mosaic pieces.

Tapogna stamped her presence in the city with public and commercial installations. She still makes lamps for a Portland-based restaurant chain.

Last year, Tapogna made a dramatic transition, moving cross-country to the much smaller burg of Lyndonville, Vt. She had fallen in love with the state during a prior residency at Catamount Arts in St. J. Since arriving 11 months ago, Tapogna has been getting her work out there — including in a recent group exhibit at Studio Place Arts in Barre — while tackling her West Coast commissions. And she's still unpacking and hanging mosaics around the "ridiculously big house" she bought in Lyndonville.

"One vision for my work is to open up my house and let people come in and see it," she said. For now, the curious — and collectors — can make an appointment. Ask to see the rosary room.

• Pamela Polston ©️ Seven Days
• "Mannequin"

Tapogna is actually making less Catholic-adjacent work now, she said. Many of the wall-hung pieces in the Backroom Gallery are portraits, both of herself at various ages and others. Viewers old enough to remember "Newhart" — a 1980s sitcom purportedly set in Vermont — might immediately recognize the guy in "Blessed Be Bob." Corralled in a thrift-shop frame, Bob has blue eyes, a receding hairline and his signature expression of patient forbearance.

None of the mosaics in Tapogna's Black Lives Matter series is on view in St. Johnsbury, but they can be seen on her Instagram. The first one, a beautiful and emotionally charged paean to George Floyd, was in the SPA exhibit.

Backroom Gallery does include a variety of Tapogna's lamps, both table and pendulum styles, as well as vases and maple syrup bottles — all covered in intricate arrangements of glass, ceramic, and odd bits and baubles. The detail is astonishing.

"It's just my way to recycle," Tapogna said. "That's the heart and soul of my work."

"Hail Mary, Full of Glass" is on view through July 1 at the Northeast Kingdom Artisans Guild's Backroom Gallery. Learn more at marytapogna.com.