At first glance, it looks like a Little Free Library. But peek inside the glowing box on Martha Davis’ front yard, and you’ll find pandas, politics and playful scenes about serious issues — all in miniature.
Davis builds and exhibits each diorama in a front-yard lightbox outside her Annex home, using miniature figurines to comment on real-world issues — from climate change and food security to housing — with a bright colour palette and a dollop of wit. Beyond the lightbox, she extends her passion through community engagement, offering pay-what-you-can workshops for adults and presentations for children, encouraging others to explore social issues through their own diorama creations.
This summer, she and her daughter threw a little party on the front porch to celebrate the 100th diorama, and several dozen neighbours showed up to hang out, sample the charcuterie board and perhaps take home a spare pair of novelty-print socks dispensed from Davis’ vast collection. On the day of her Toronto Star interview, Davis wore a pair covered in jovial white pups, reminiscent of her late dog, Casey.
The latest diorama is an ode to Casey, featuring a scaled-down version of Davis herself, standing in front of a large painting of Casey, admiring a miniature model of the pup, slowly rotating in a red wingback chair as a phalanx of other canines look on. This simple scene is unique in Davis’ oeuvre: her main passion is creating dioramas that grapple with social issues. “I am deeply concerned about the state of our world,” the sign on her lightbox reads, “but favour exploring the many problems we face with a lighthearted touch.”
Davis is certainly light of spirit: wander into her home and you’ll find a Technicolour wonderland, every corner filled with an eye-popping curio: there’s a Kermit the Frog spring toy hanging off the wall, a wee neon-blue toy car tucked into the corner of a bookshelf, a mailbox cheerfully hand-painted to look like a row of houses. Her mother’s miniature chair collection is given prominent placement in the front room; it helped spur her early fascination with figurines and dollhouses. “It’s been a lifelong passion for me,” she says.
Venturing down into the basement, I enter Davis’ wild workshop, complete with her own massive dollhouse, purchased in her mother’s honour after she died. One wall is lined with tubs filled with figurines and minuscule fruits and vegetables and leftover items from her life that may find a home in the next diorama (she has one on the go now that incorporates many months’ worth of mouthwash bottles). Davis treats her dioramas like mandalas; after she’s made one (during the busiest phase of her project, her goal was to make one per week) and photographed it, she takes it apart to make another one: reduce, reuse, recycle.
“I like the fact that you can compose a small little life for a little scene within a small little area,” she says. These diminutive projects are a low-barrier way to get people thinking about the issues, Davis says. “I like the idea that it’s small and compact and you can focus on one issue. People…can ruminate on them and take their time with them,” she says.
Davis began making dioramas during the pandemic. In 2021, she started arranging half a dozen small plastic panda toys in the front yard to brighten the day of neighbourhood denizens. The bear population exploded to 80-strong, and their activities grew more elaborate — they even had their own election. Davis made an acclaimed short film about the project, entitled “Pandaland,” that played on the festival circuit. But Davis still felt fed up with the state of the world — perhaps her dioramas could speak for her?
“I saw that people’s mental health, both children and adults, was being negatively affected because of the pandemic, and it seemed that society as a whole was in a downward spiral. People were baking bread and doing self-care, but it seemed that nobody was talking openly about the challenges we were facing,” Davis says. “Children particularly were being protected and left out of the conversation.”
Her filmmaking experience with green-screen technology came in handy; she collaged images on her iPad to become the backdrop for little scenes she began to create, arranging toys and trinkets into scenes delving into issues like climate change and food security. One, about housing, shows two pandas: one living in a small utilitarian tent, one in a large glamorous tent, its mouth overflowing with greenery. A climate-focused piece shows polar bears and penguins battling over a coveted piece of ice, while a food-security-inspired diorama showcases a “fantasy food bank” where denizens gleefully stock up on junk and alcohol and ignore the simpler options.
Not only are they handy, but they have also helped Davis build her own bonds within the neighbourhood, too: “I adore the community aspect of it. I love that passersby can come and experience a little joy on their way to work, but that also people stop and I sometimes sit out on the porch in the afternoon and gab with people. It’s so nice. I met tons of my neighbours this way.”
Despite being disassembled, the dioramas are not truly lost forever; Davis photographs each one and has collated the pictures into multiple booklets. Her photographs have also been displayed in art shows; photos of seven of her climate-themed dioramas are featured in the show Luminous at the Heliconian Club through Oct. 28 (by appointment only).
She gives presentations to Montessori students and has started offering pay-what-you-can workshops for adults, so others can make their own miniature scenes. Everyone who enters Davis’ workshop is greeted by a piece of posterboard that adorns the wall opposite her workstation; shiny letter-stickers make up the message: “Courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of its own.” I tell Davis I really like that sentiment. “That’s Michelle Obama for ya!” she says.
