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Hello...my name is Stanley Mac...
and welcome to the inter-sanctum of my studio.
A virtual gallery of some of my favorite recent works.
I started my career in professional visual communications working with lead type. Yeah...back in the days when type was set with a hot lead machine called a Lino-type. I sat on a little stool and changed numbers in page trays, called galleys, of type that they printed the "special operator" phone books from. (yeah...back when the operators actually used phone books) Not long after that an old school friend called me and said he needed someone to run the art room at his family's print shop. I told him that I didn't know anything about offset printing...so, he asked me to come down and visit his newly inherited operation. When I walked in he handed me a book...The History of Lithography. (heck...I had to ask him what Lithography was) It was offset printing. A transfer of ink from a rolling metal plate to paper. A process still used today.
Sure, I had grown up in the high school art room but, never had any serious aspirations of being a professional artist. Little did I know, I was on the road to experiences I never dreamt of. I took the job and eventually ended up working with several print shops, type houses (back when ad agencies had to send out to get their type set. That's a whole other story) sign shops and advertising agencies. I ran an in-house agency for a sporting goods chain, was a portrait photographer, and even painted billboards for a couple of years. I always felt that these experiences gave me a well rounded understanding of the field I was in. I found out that being an artist wasn't what I did for a living...it is what I am.
Eventually, due to the birth of the personal computer, the world of commercial art evolved into skills I was not prepared for. It was time to go back to school and retool. A whole new, exciting door was opened for me. The world of pixels and vector lines! Now, all the years of skills that I had become so good at doing with darkrooms, horizontal cameras, film, exact-o knives and paste-up boards was now created sitting with a monitor and a keyboard. Halleluiah! The creative mind was free to run at last! Not bound so much by how to accomplish it but, what to accomplish. The innovative juices were not held to rubylith and haft-tone screens anymore!
Now the world comes to me in the age of electronic communication...through the internet. I love what I do and relish in the joy my product brings to those I create for. I truly live a blessed life and hope that what I produce makes the lives around me a little better place.
In this "gallery" you'll see pieces I have assembled for various clients...and some just for self-entertainment. You'll probably even learn a little bit more about me...my likes and interests.Oh...and I designed and maintain this website myself, too.
I hope you enjoy your stroll.
