Mario loved to shop at yard sales, flea markets, antique malls, shops and shows. He bought things often overlooked by others. He bought buttons, pins, beads, ribbons, blue-and-white china plates, and more. Some of the the things had an intrinsic interest in the own right, but others served him as material to be incorporated into other creations. He would take an old, uninteresting cabinet and encrust it with shards from broken plates. A pillow would be covered with ribbons, buttons, and pins. Some of the assemblages were built around a theme: Mario found a medal and ribbon honoring a chicken for its egg-laying prowess. He acquired a taxidermied chicken,  the precise number of eggs noted on the medal, and some artificial grass, and built a construction, housed in a Plexiglas box, in which the chicken sat proudly with all of the eggs before her on a bed of grass.