From 9th St. Print

Mac Hillenbrand has recently been named one of the current '50 to Watch' San Diego artist's by the directors of the Mingei and Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego for his innovative and visually stunning paintings out of wood inlay and resin. Through his successful efforts to combine the renaissance era art form of marquetry wood inlay with his native California surf art culture Mac offers the world new and breathtaking original works of art orchestrating light reflected by the brilliant 3-dimensional grain characteristics of different wood types through his own surfboard glass-work inspired innovative and prismatic 'resin-painting.' Both a graduate of The American School of French Marquetry and the founder of The French Fry Factory underground ‘art-space’ he is currently pioneering the use of marquetry wood veneering techniques specifically to explore the aesthetic organic parallels between wood grain characteristics and oceanic textures. He lives, works and surfs in San Diego. Mac - "Since the grain patterns in the wood are the result of water and nutrients moving through a tree I find there to be a beautiful cosmic parallel to be explored in crating artwork that purposes wood grain to represent oceanic texture. As the grain lines illuminate a point of tension or growth in the tree so does the wave that refracts around a point of tension on the coast, both of which document a transfer of energy either really slowly within the life of the tree or explosively fast as with the mounting surf. In this sense I feel like when I'm creating artwork out of wood and resin I'm using time it's self as a medium." "For superior varnishing all works utilize high gloss Art-Resin specifically designed to inhibit uv rays and preserve colors. Working with this resin, I’ve also began to create distinctive abstract resin paintings and now I’m integrating marquetry veneer work with resin painting."