Jessie McNally, “Witches Be Talkin'”, mixed media, 2012. Courtesy of the artist

Artist Jessie McNally first came to my attention a little over a year ago, at the 1st Annual Lowertown Art Show, where her surreal, artfully “upcycled” mixed media sculptures immediately caught my eye. A member of the artist-run co-op, AZ Gallery, McNally also works as a tattoo artist for Steady Tattoo near the University of Minnesota campus, and she’s recently curated a curious group exhibition bringing those creative spheres together: “A Crude Menagerie: Minnesota Tattooers and Friends.” Jessie McNally, “Saints Come Marching In,” mixed media, 2012. Courtesy of the artist

With work in a variety of media and forms, the show features 16 artists, all of whom have contributed work around a sideshow theme, celebrating the extravagant weirdness of the carnival: circus beasts and barkers, clowns, freaks of nature and fortune tellers.

The majority of works are 2D and, of these, I love the winsome pen-and-ink sketches by Jax Quackenbush, as well as the paintings and drawings by McNally’s Steady Tattoo colleagues, Craig Moore and Jo Treder, which hearken back to the bold shading and clean, saturated palette and stylized design sensibility of classic, early 20th century American tattoo art. Liz Q Harper’s mounted trophies are also clever, playfully inverting the grotesqueries of hunting and taxidermy by way of colorful, cute stuffed animal heads.

Liz Q. Harper, “Elwood Fiscalface.” 2012. Courtesy of AZ Gallery

But McNally’s own sculptures – 11 of which are on view –offer the most compelling reason to seek out this show. Her mixed media creations freely borrow from Mexican folk art and offrenda traditions, particularly the marigolds, skeletons and skulls of Day of the Dead imagery. And while those inspirations are plainly evident, McNally’s found-art compositions, at once whimsical and macabre, are also wildly imaginative and distinctively her own. She takes thrift store finds – figurines, mannequins, old toys – and painstakingly bedazzles them with various and sundry found and shiny things – antlers and doll parts, cast-off jewelry and broken bits of machinery, etchings and painted designs. And out of all these bits come sculptures emotionally resonant and evocative, like dream totems – mysterious but visually coherent, intricate and elegantly executed.

“A Crude Menagerie: Minnesota Tattoers and Friends” will be on view through January 20 at AZ Gallery, 308 Prince Street, St. Paul. Gallery hours are Thursday and Friday, 5 to 8 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.