Accidental Artists Declare Their Love, One Rubik’s Cube at a Time

Phil Pollack and Jenn Loeb’s love story came with a twist: Surprise success born of a pandemic hobby.

Phil Pollack didn’t pretend he knew a lot about art when he took Jenn Loeb on a date to the Whitney Museum in 2017. She wasn’t much into art, either. Both remember feeling slightly mystified as they poked through galleries under the museum’s gridded ceilings. “We were kind of looking at everything going, ‘What do you think all this means?’” Ms. Loeb said. Now what mystifies them is the volume of strangers who consider them artists. “Phil had trouble coloring in the lines in kindergarten. It’s crazy to think we made something that’s in a museum.” Like a lot of couples, Ms. Loeb and Mr. Pollack felt a calling to create during the pandemic. But what they settled on creating took everyone who saw it by surprise: Since early 2020, Ms. Loeb and Mr. Pollack have been collaborating on a series of celebrity portraits made from Rubik’s Cubes. Their Alex Trebek piece is currently on display at the Ripley’s Believe it or Not! Museum in Gatlinburg, Tenn.