Mac Hillenbrand is the founder of the infamous underground artspace warehouse rock club and speakeasy The French Fry Factory (03’-05’ Oakland.) He is the leader of his own surf gang The Coalition for Shralping and a former resident of Baja’s East Cape. He is Disk Jockey Old Spice the vinyl only northern soul and oldies dj. A solo through hiker of the John Muir Trail and the owner of the marquetry art business Amber Waves of Grain, he holds a C-33 painting contractor’s licensing and lives, works and surfs in San Diego. Above all, he is working to be the first person to use marquetry wood veneering techniques specifically to explore the aesthetic organic parallels between wood grain characteristics and oceanic textures.
Indigenous to the canyonus chaparral wilds of San Diego, Mac Hillenbrand is a man who once found himself lost amidst the paved dominions of the Southern Californian super sprawl and it’s embedded hegemonic sociological systems. The art he has been a part of is what has yielded him a bearing on the ever evolving complexities of his own contemporary epoch. He has traversed the eucalyptus lined hillsides behind the seminal 90’s San Diego Indie music venue The Che Café’. He has found himself in the deepest cavernous throws of the Baja California surf and sometimes even reemerged. He has grinded down the cement boundaries of mankind destroying parts of himself and predominant convention in ‘new school’ skateboarding’s glorious overthrow of things hence prior and in surging through the peripheries of these perceived adolescent dominions he took it upon himself to attempt to validate the worth and heritage of these countercultural institutions with bad VHS video.
And so he migrated north to the Red Wood forested environ of Santa Cruz where he could improve his cinematic endeavors by studying under the master video artists at The University of California working closely with the great Gustavo Vasquez but spending most of his time with his musician friends, who were always much nicer and much more fun than fellow film students. In his desire to reciprocate the love and sincerity all the musicians he came across in the bands he knew put into their music, he embarked upon his most audacious and infamous creation he is appropriately unknown for… The French Fry Factory Oakland, his underground art space and rock club Mr. Hillenbrand opened and ran at the age of 23 out of a dilapidated produce warehouse he inhabited and manifested into one of the most respected indie music venues during the time of it’s existence circa 03’-05’. Taking on work as a painting contractor to save himself from the agenda’s of outside funding he was successfully able to create an unmistakably genuine performance space and sound stage where new and regionally beloved bands, filmmakers, and artists could keep true to their respective agendas whether they lay in the thunderously triumphant ethereal realms of the stoner rock revival or beyond…
After eventually returning to his home waters of San Diego and continuing in the trades for 10 years he currently finds him self repurposing his talents to mastering the renaissance art form of marquetry and seeks to be the first person to use this art of mosaicking naturally occurring wood grain patterns together, to create surf art exploring the unique character and oceanic textures of distinct surf breaks. He also makes psycahdelic abstract resin painting.