Today we’d like to introduce you to Eric Mack.
Eric, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
As a southern youth in the 1980ʼs, total enjoyment came from making, constructing, and cultivating resourceful ways of visualizing my thoughts.
After graduating high school, I had the opportunity to attend the Atlanta College of Art, and I moved to Atlanta from Charleston, SC in 1994. Seven months after graduating from ACA, I had my first solo exhibition at Gallery Domo in the spring of 1999, I received a reception from the public and critics alike.
Since then, I have participated in in various group exhibitions, been selected for solo shows, participated in biennials, received international awards, and performed lectures. I have been fortunate with press from print media, to motion pictures and television projects that have provided platforms for creative dialog. My work has even been featured in product design.
Curators such as Ruth Fine, Franklin Sirmans, Jeffrey Grove, Christian Rattemayer, Vida L. Brown Michael Rooks, Jeffrey Uslip and Rashida Bumbray have recognized, and included works in a variety of exhibitions over my 20 year career.
Past projects/collections include: Bank of America, Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, Embassy of Sierra Leone, Embassy of Madagascar, ING Investments, King & Spalding Law Firm, Atlanta Gas & Light Company, Turner Field, The Center for Disease Control, Clark Atlanta University Museum, Focus Films, Alternative Apparel and Primary Information.
After moving to Germany in 2009, The City of Munich: Landeshaupstadt Kulturreferat awarded a state stipend for work space within the “Atelier Haus” for five years to create and discover under Bavarian skies. The experience forever changed my life, and expanded my global perspective. So much so, that I am honored to sit on the board of the Goethe Zentrum, German cultural learning center, Atlanta chapter.
My visual language is centered around rhythm as the basis of our visual world. Using signs and symbols, I have drawn from my experiences and inspirations, as well as micro and macro trends influencing various aspects of society. Since the beginning of my career, I have aimed to reinterpret the system-based environment that we inhabit. For every year that goes by, new experiences, world travels and the evolution of technology continue to expand my visual vocabulary. When you look across my body of work over the past 20+ years, you can see the language of my life’s experiences and the subjects that I find thought provoking and inspiring.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
As an abstract painter employing a personal vocabulary of sign and symbol, I have aimed to reinterpret the system-based environment that we inhabit. I use shapes, patterns, structures, and tessellation, examining how these elements can narrate everyday stories.
Over the years, I have been inspired to create works on everything from canvas, computer mother boards, re-purposed veneers, plastic cubes, glass sheets & cylinders,
My work encompasses components of architecture, space, technology, mathematics and language in a juxtaposed, yet unified vision. By using blocks and angles of color brushed and smudged across random perimeters, and broken and solid line-work, I am able to respectively split and gel together a variety of hues and shapes. Found within the core of the work are cultural references, signs of technological advances, schematic diagrams, component dials and switches. When combined, these elements create a piece of visual sheet music that is seen instead of heard. The rhythm of life can be inhaled and exhaled with each view.
Artists face many challenges, but what do you feel is the most pressing among them?
Locally, I would have to say that artists are interested in finding ways to cultivate new collectors, and finding ways to bring a sense of excitement and intrigue back to the art of collecting. In the early 2000’s, there seemed to be an “art collecting fever” that ran rampant through the city. It felt like there were many galleries, and artists that were being well supported. I am not saying that art collecting is not going strong now, but the support and passion for art felt more engaged back then.
How does our creative community build interest around collecting Atlanta based artists? We offer a rich and diverse group of artists for new residents to explore. How can we collectively educate them on the who, what, or where to go to begin their Atlanta art collection? Ongoing educational programs directed at building the collector community citywide, and social events geared toward connecting collectors, artists and galleries would foster interest and passion for all that the Atlanta art scene has to offer.
The Contemporary has a program called “Home is where the art is””. It is a very thoughtful, and engaging way to connect the arts community. Why not expand on this concept and introduce a 12 month schedule that focuses on the many Atlanta neighborhoods that have collectors all throughout. Every month there could be a new neighborhood /community that spotlights the collectors, and it can be set up like a tour of homes.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
I am represented by Whitespace Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia.
Works are available at: Pierogi 2000 in Brooklyn, New York.
CANVAS-MALIBU in Malibu, California.
Currently, I have four exhibitions on view:
Charting the Terrain: Eric Mack and Pamela Smith Hudson
March 14 – September 9, 2018 at The California African American Museum in Los Angeles.
“Inside the Perimeter” at The Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia until October 2018
“Components” at CANVAS-MALIBU in Malibu, California
The Four Seasons Atlanta Hotel. Park 75 on the Second Floor of the establishment.
Fall 2018:
A solo show at Channel to Channel in Nashville, Tennessee
Completion of a 10′ x 20′ painting for the lobby of the up and coming luxury apartment building Modera in Buckhead, located next to the Shoppes of Buckhead.
Other Projects:
Primary Information based in Brooklyn included my work in a postcard series earlier this year:
http://www.primaryinformation.org/product/eric-mack/
This postcard by Eric Mack is part of a series devoted to artists’ postcards initiated by Primary Information in the wake of the Trump Administration, as well as the social and political tumult that preceded it. Since the election, there has been a growing movement of citizens using postcards to voice their concern to their representatives. As such, the postcard is a media form that is vital to political and social engagement in the United States. It is also a form with a dedicated image space, and Primary Information feels strongly that images accompanying this civic engagement should be created by artists.
An exclusive, limited edition print produced by Alternative Apparel was released in monthly collaboration with ArtsATL & Fallen Arrows.
Twelve Atlanta based artists were chosen for this project. The participating Atlanta-based artists draw on their variety of backgrounds, viewpoints and mediums in creating their designs for A. Tee. L. The collaborative series offers an avenue to promote Atlanta’s visual artists through a mobile lens and allows their work to be enjoyed by a broader audience. Starting out, the t-shirts will feature designs from one artist each month. The project is intent on sharing the important works from Atlanta community’s creators through a new canvas.
Fall 2018: “The 30th Anniversary Exhibition” at The Stone Center Museum at The University of North Carolina at.Chapel Hill.
Contact Info:
- Address: Studio Address:
The Westside Cultural Art Center, 760 10th Street, Atlanta, Georgia 30318 - Website: ericmack.com , http://whitespace814.com/artists/eric-mack/ , https://flatfiles.pierogi2000.com/artist/eric-mack
- Email: emack76@gmail.com
- Instagram: @76emack
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eric.mack.104
Image Credit:
Eric Mack
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