Mac Hillenbrand is our ArtResin Winner!

Congratulations to artist Mac Hillenbrand, our latest ArtResin winner! A lifetime ArtResin customer based in San Diego, Mac has been using ArtResin for the past 10 years to create his art. Mac is a "marquetry wood inlay artist - specifically, a 'marquetarian' if you want to make it sound the most highfalutin. I essentially specialize in making seascapes out of wood either in marquetry wood inlay or from the grain of singular boards."

Does where you're from or where you currently live influence your work? 

Yes, I'm quite often attempting to capture the soul of certain local beaches using wood grain.  I also tend to work with a lot of local urban timber live-edge slabs.  Also as I travel across California to do art shows, I search out unique regional woods like redwood from the bay area or buckeye from central CA.  But just here in San Diego our climate allows a huge range of trees to grow so it's a pretty amazing place to be a woodworker.  We of course have indigenous desert and chaparral coniferous special species like CA Liveoak and Torrey Pines but also any tree that can grow in both Australia and Mediterranean climates can grow here as can most tropical species as well.  Probably more species of wood available locally here than any other region of the United States.  Don't tell rival woodworkers in the deciduous forrest only zones cuz they'll be all jealous and wanna move here... 

What's your art background?  Are you self-taught or did you study art? 

When I was a kid I was the type that wanted to explore the local canyons all day and not take showers so a lotta affluent privileged kids were real mean all the time and so I'd go escape the playground and collect leaves, study the patterns on them ect...Eventually I became all best friends with all the other loser kids in my class and started skateboarding and surfing when these were still cultural institutions for outcasts like myself.  By the time I was a teenager in the 90's, San Diego had become a mecca for aspiring pro skaters who would film legit video parts at my neighborhood schools and so my 1st artistic aspiration was to do as they did and make surf and skate videos with bad VHS or Hi8 cams and some linear editing decks in my high school video film class.  I'd also be doing lots of "uncompensated teenage labor" for my folks.  My dad had broken his neck skiing in 1964, became a quadrapelegic and then learned to walk again, badly, so it was expected of me, the only child son, to perform handyman tasks like sanding decks and painting fences.  So I started learning the skills for what I do now "Karate Kid" style. 

In 93' my folks bought a run down mountain hostel in Mammoth Lakes and I spent my summers building bunkbeds and pushing boulders around the hillside.  Also by some miracle I got myself into college at UC Santa Cruz where I continued on with the video production as my major.  I started to discover and watch all the high-minded art films and fostered aspirations of making highly intelligent art films.  I could have maybe did it too if I wasn't getting all partied out hanging with all the musicians and shooting basic music videos documenting the scene instead.  This is to say I approach my artwork with a film school background being better at cinematography and photographic composition than I am at traditional sketching or illustration.  Once I graduated, I followed my friend's bands to Oakland where I would eventually get a hold of a 8,500 sq' warehouse and start an underground DIY venue the people named "The French Fry Factory." From 03' - 05' I ran one of the "it" illegal rockclubs of the day and spent two years helping other people do their art being the venue and not the talent though many a good show flyer I did make and those should count in the art portfolio.  Mostly bands that wanted to sound like Black Sabbath but I'd also host community theatre and curate art shows in there.  Jello Biafra and bands like "The Residents" would come through.  It was rad.  You don't however make any money doing that so I started doing odd jobs like hauling and painting.  When My venue had run it's course I went through a dive bar vinyl DJ Old Spice period seeking rare soul and psych 45's and then ended up moving back to SD and becoming a licensed painting contractor. 

For about 10 years I worked in this capacity mostly painting white apartments white and then surfing in Baja a lot between the jobs.  I worked as a professional painter until I developed a severe allergy to latex which also makes me allergic to neoprene wetsuits. Like go into anaphylactic shock allergic.  So right when I started a family I lost my livelihood painting from the allergy.  Made a goal to surf every day without a wetsuit for a year and by the end of that year I had decided to dedicate the rest of my life to using wood grain to do seascapes.  Whilst as a contractor I would sand cabinetry for days and see surf breaks in the grain.  Eventually I set out to realize these seascapes out of wood and went back to school to study at The American School of French Marquetry which happened to be in San Diego where I'm from.  There I learned the traditional French methods for wood inlay. That was ten years ago and I've since been breaking all the rules developing my own contemporary techniques.  For anybody who's seen Zoolander I'd love for you to think of me as the Hansel of marquetry wood inlay.  Just kidding....

Are you a full-time artist or do you create around work hours? 

Full time and after ten years of being a full time working artist I now also run the family hostel and am a caregiver to my disabled parents.

What do you love about the mediums that you use in your work? 

I yield the power of nature.  It's the best!  Woods nature's hologram and it's a highly underexploited painting medium.  I create colors unique to the one piece of wood I'm working with so it's inherently special.  I also love searching for unique slabs and veneer I work with.  This is a carryover from my years looking for rare records.  It's a similar skill set.  Always on the treasure hunt for the perfect board to make the perfect fantasy surf break in the grain.   

How did you discover resin?  How has resin impacted your artwork? 

Repairing surfboards. Resin makes it possible to do colored marquetry art without fear of the colors fading.  It also enabled me to create my "Waves in the Wood" series works because you can colorize the wood without the color being so opaque that it blocks out the wood grain.  

Can you provide a brief rundown of your process?

For Marquetry art, I shoot photos that I'm essentially adapting into wood.  From my photos I create elaborate cad vector designs individually drawing out shapes I'll fulfill in wood as if I'm an architect.  Then I'll use a scroll saw or a laser cutter to cut my veneer.  Some of it I'll keep in natural wood tones and others I'll stain.  I'll organize what could be up to like 1000 veneer components and then assemble and laminate them using a mechanical glue press.  Finally I varnish the work under ArtResin to preserve the color and then buff the pieces.  There's like 50 steps and the process can take months for one series.  This is process that took me years to innovate. 

For the "Waves in the Wood" series, which I do to relax after the marquetry art, I find boards with a good coastline and surf potential lurking in the grain, tint my resin, define the ocean and then eventually paint the surf breaks on according to the grain lines.  So all the waves follow the refraction in the grain lines, grain line by grain line, as to illuminate the shared patterns in the cosmos.  It's a delicate matter and it employs years of studying bathymetry looking for undiscovered surf breaks in the world.  I don't blow white paint around with a hot air gun.   

Why do you want to make art? What motivates you to create? 

It's a circumstance.  It was the best option for an injured contractor / retired rock promoter:)  That's true but of course I do it because it's the best use of all my combined skill sets and passion.  It's my calling and it's the best ticket for a life well lived doing something I can continue to get better and better at my whole life.  I especially love that through the context of making and selling art I get the very best version of the people I encounter.  My work is highly meaningful to my collectors and might, as they tell me directly in dramatic language, symbolize a late relative, their surviving cancer, their success or a start of a new chapter for them.  Life is hard sometimes and people have incredibly hard circumstances they navigate without divulging the details.  My art helps take the edge off.  It's a fucking honor!  + it gives me license to wear flamboyant 70's button down rayon shirts which is nice...    

Does art help you in other areas of your life? 

Yeah perpetrating all the beauty helps reverse all the childhood neglect trauma.  That's most likely too heavy a concept for you passive readers and casual art enthusiasts but for some of us our art is an affirmational psychological life or death type thing echoing man's search for meaning and worth.  The artist's life is no walk in the park except when you're literally walking to your art booth at an art faire in a park which happens kinda often but aside from that, it's no walk in the park!  I love the artist, surfing and fishing community my work puts me amidst and my rolodex of clients includes actual tech demigods, Hollywood producers, government officials and straight up salt of the earth dudes I can call upon at any given juncture.  These people move mountains and by some miracle they choose to have my art above their bed forming the shape of their lives.  It's crazy.  They respect what I do.  It gives me a sense of peace knowing that I have all the people in my corner if I need some advice or something.  I also get to prove to my kids that you can do something you love for a living. That a pretty big parenting win.  

What do you hope someone sees or feels when they look at your art? 

Simply that they're transported to some super unison ethereal space between our own respective lived experience.   A place they've conjured up out of their own psyche but that was prompted by what they see and relate to in my art.  The "nature" in the wood get's the lion's share of credit for this but I do like to think of myself as reminding people that wonder inherent to nature is there for them...in this art...   

How do you define success as an artist? What does that look and feel like for you?  Success as an artist is defined by the connoisseurs of your art aka the people that experience it and affirm its value and I don't just mean patrons.  If you find them using actual expressive or arcane adjectives to describe the feeling the work gives them that counts.  Equally admissible are  faces of jaw dropping, deer in the headlights type looks of dumbfounded wonderment.  Your art is working if it stops the people in their tracks and makes the talkative extrovert ones shut up and the shy introverts actually say something.  We're trying to blow minds but it can also be akin to the simple feeling you have when you cook for someone and you know they really like it.  Basic simple joy counts but too often this world we live in erros on the side of validating the safety of simplicity so I say take tremendous risk, really apply yourself as an artist and do some robust nearly impossible stuff.  About the money...it's great to make it with your art but don't beat yourself up or let anyone else beat you up if you either do or do not make money with yours.        

What's your favorite resin tip you'd like to share with our readers?  I like a star head pie filling tip.  just kidding.  If you're trying to transport two resin'd artworks face to face one on top of the other I highly recommend my old blue and grey Mexican blanket.  Towels will often imprint the towel fabric onto the resin.  You want the sort of really soft Mexican blanket that's most likely synthetic wool.  Something that would have been sold circa 1994' next to the stuffed iguanas and Bart Simpson themed Tshirts at the Rosarito Beach bazaar.  That's what you're looking for :)

Where do you sell your work? 

Artwork is one big game of Frogger.  Jump on a lilly pad.  Jump on a log.  Try not to get hit by a truck.  I do a ton of the top art faires in CA but I'm lucky and can do any surf, fishing, maritime, flora  or woodworking events that suit me. Also the occasional local big sticky street festival. I've had my own brick and mortar gallery during the pandemic when I could make a sweetheart commercial lease deal and occasionally I work with galleries on the highly unlikely off-chance they don't take a 50% commission.  I have an online store at www.amberwavesofgrain.gallery and you can reach me on the gram at @amber_waves_of_art for DM sales.  Sometime soon I'll smarten up and pay for adds and do E-commerce but until then I'll remain an art carnie loading up my 07' Tacoma and setting up my shows as a one man show art gypsy beast man in his rayon shirt.  I just can't quit you...the Art Faires that is...