Adding to Humor’s Shelf Life : Fred Rubin says his whimsical boxes stem from his main concern, comedy.

Fred Rubin still remembers his first time in the booth, watching with the producers as his first television script was brought to life. That was back in 1977, for a long-forgotten half-hour comedy show called “Szysnyk,” but Rubin can still recall his euphoria, and the laughs that followed his jokes.

He’s been getting a similar feeling lately, not just for the television writing he’s done for some 18 years, but for his first art exhibit. And humor is still a big part of it.

Now hanging at Emerson’s coffeehouse are 19 of Rubin’s mixed-media collages, colorful boxes and compartments that gather a variety of found objects, from small toys to rescued trash. One oblong piece called “Comics Rule” is populated by comic book characters, and has already led to two commissions for Rubin.

“In television, everything you do is constantly being altered by other powers--the actor, the director, the network, the studio,” says Rubin. “An artwork is just yours. Nobody tells you to change that.”

He’s calling the exhibit “Between the Lines,” referring to both the art-making he pursues between work writing comedy lines , and the rectangular compartments of each piece that he paints and populates with objects. Rubin has been making them since 1992 in the Valley Village home he shares with his wife, “Home Improvement” script consultant Marley Sims, and their 9-year-old son, Dale.

Most of the works are made from pine boxes he purchases that already have 24 small compartments. “I collect a lot of little objects that go in them,” Rubin says. “When people see me at garage sales they just grin because they know I’m going to buy things that nobody else wants.

“I pride myself on using a lot of cast-off materials and recycled materials.”

Some of the appropriated objects in the show include an old paintbrush, a burnt-out flash cube, a used Polaroid canister and canceled stamps. For one work, sold before it could be included in the show, Rubin paid homage to the Northridge earthquake by creating a cracked stucco surface for the box, and then filling it with neighborhood rubble gathered from 15 different addresses.

Most of the works don’t actually focus on such monumental subjects.

“I think these pieces reflect a sense of humor about them,” says Rubin, who has worked as a writer-producer for such popular shows as “Archie Bunker’s Place,” “Night Court,” “Mama’s Family” and “Webster,” writing more than 40 half-hour episodes himself.

“People find this art not threatening. You can go to a lot of exhibits, and they’re about death, or war, or anguish. These have a sense of fun about them. That comes from my main concern in life, which is comedy.”

But his interest in creating art goes back to his youth in Chicago. “When I was a hippie I made candles and sold them. In college I took design classes. But I never amassed a body of work that I thought could sell. Every box you see here was in a room in my house, just sitting on the floor. People would visit the house and ask to buy one.”

He sold six pieces that way, before finally deciding to try to put an exhibit together. The show landed at Emerson’s, in large part because Rubin has become a regular there.

“I love it,” says Tarit Tanjasiri, owner of Emerson’s, of Rubin’s artwork. “It’s different from the other artists that have been here, who have mostly shown oils and watercolors. And I’ve seen people react to it. He’s done some things here that the kids have gone nuts over.”

“When you work in Hollywood,” Rubin says, “there is a certain pace, a certain aura, of business and money and work and prestige and celebrity. Doing this artwork takes me so far from that. And it’s such an important rest.”

There has been some crossover, however. For the new sitcom “On Our Own,” to debut this month on ABC, the set-decorator has secured a couple of Rubin’s boxes. “I was actually pretty thrilled by that,” Rubin says, laughing, “because how many artists get to see their work seen by 30 million people?”

WHERE AND WHEN

What: Mixed-media collages by Fred Rubin.

Location: Emerson’s, 13203 Ventura Blvd., Studio City.

Hours: 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. Monday to Thursday, 7 a.m. to 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday. Exhibit ends Sept. 8.

Price: Free.

Call: (818) 986-2233.