Shop Exhibition Artwork

Creative in Community Resident Artie Mack will be presenting an exhibition of artwork created during their residency.

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Artie Mack uses hand cut paper drawings, acrylics and ink with a touch of mixed media to bring narratives and fictional stories to life. Working from a place of “What if?” Mack uses his imagination as a response to various media content and life experiences, culminating in a series of conceptual book covers designed to amplify the stories of marginalized characters in fantastical settings. “Over the past few years – and especially the last couple of months putting this exhibit together – I started seeing myself more as a storyteller than an artist with a specific medium. This gradual realization has removed a certain amount of pressure as I became more intrigued by the who, what, where, how and why of each character rather than needing to create a ‘flawless’ drawing of them.”

VIS (pronounced vis or wee-reys) is a collaborative form of self-expression representing another Artie Mack Experience that uses multiple visual art mediums and overlapping current themes, such as Black identity and deaf culture, to explore the intersectional human experience. VIS allows viewers to shift focus from visual art and textual stories to exploring ways one can promote visibility and influence change within their communities through Sign Language.  

Mack is driven by telling stories and in crafting space for American Sign Language visibility. VIS emphasizes being seen and bringing inner stories to life. “What’s unique is that if you know Sign Language you get the dual experience of being able to read the title and see it as a drawing because there aren’t any English texts present, just hands.” Mack believes that our hands are a work of art and that our ability to communicate and tell stories with them is nothing short of magical. “When I looked up ‘vis’ and saw that it means ‘force, strength, and power’ it became fitting because the characters you’ll meet throughout embody these traits in their own way.”

A 90’s kid at heart who grew up watching Nickelodeon, was committed to Saturday morning cartoons, and loved collecting Power Rangers action figures and K.A. Applegate’s Animorphs books, Mack considers the countless pop culture media outlets they escaped to as a foundation for their endless imagination. “I would redraw a lot of my favorite shows and put myself into them because that’s how badly I wanted to live in that particular universe, whether it was Digimon or Pokemon or the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers.” Being an avid watcher of vampire and supernatural sagas like True Blood, Lost Girl, and Being Human, along with reading manga favorites like Yuyu Hakusho and Dragonball Z as a teenager, Mack finds a thrill in reading or watching stories and repositioning the narrative to fit deaf and hard of hearing perspectives like himself. 

The growing popularity of comics and the DC and Marvel Cinematic Universes play a role in Mack’s current creative process, with favorites like Black Panther, The Amazing Spider-Man, and Black Lightning, as they routinely look at superhero covers to draw inspiration from. “Many of us turn to fantasy and superheroes during times of crisis. The coronavirus is a crippling reality making escapism enticing.” Mack understands that made up stories and fantasy, and the art that it manifests, can allow us to cope during hard times with the bliss of our imagination. If well done, a story can feel almost real – which is a feeling Mack chases during their creative process.

“My comfort and resolution was and is creating my own stories. My own narratives. My own characters who have their own abilities based on circumstances I rarely, if ever, see represented on TV or read about in books.”

Born Arthur Clayton McWilliams IV in Lincoln, NE, Artie Mack graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2013 with a Bachelor of Arts in English and double minored in Art and Ethnic Studies. Vis is their third exhibition at the LUX.