Bill Mack Sculptures

For several thousand years the artisans and craftsmen of the world have created vibrant living sculptures meant for wall display. From the pyramids of Egypt to the tympanums of major cathedrals, art patrons have reveled at the magnificence and skill that relief sculptures entail. The onset of new building materials for homes and businesses has changed the usage and feasibility of constructing major life-size relief sculptures for the wall, without damage to the structure. This has caused artists working in this genre to seek other methods of construction that will revitalize an art form that, under other circumstances, might disappear.

Bill Mack is a sculptor and craftsman of the highest order. He has developed a niche in relief sculpture that has been unparalleled in one hundred years of figurative sculpture. His romance-filled relief sculptures are living, breathing works that appear to emerge from the material behind. A material which he has few contemporaries, if any. The materials he has developed combine the elegance and precision of a cast bronze without the weight that is inherent in the media. As well, he has worked with materials ranging to snow-white sand resins to materials that evoke travertine marble. Lately, his usage of the patinas has transformed his bronze and mixed metals sculptures into something almost otherworldly.

"Calling my artwork bas-relief, " Mack says "is incorrect, since bas-relief technically refers to low relief sculpture. My art has more physical depth than high relief; it incorporates various elements in the round, rising toward the viewer, as in my 'Illusion' image where her leg leaves the background extending into space." He continues "Until I offered my current collection of sculptures, this art form had not appeared to any extent in galleries"

Mack was born in Minneapolis and was the first in his family to develop an interest in art. He was working as a bronze caster and draftsman when, at 17 years old, he found that an memorial relief sculpture being submitted for casting was, to his standards, substandard. So he decided to submit his own design, which was accepted instantly. The rest is proverbial history.

He has worked tirelessly developing his new media and creating pieces as diverse as eagles and horses, to mother and child images and athletes, to the beautiful nudes we have become accustomed to.

Once emerging on the scene in the early 1980's, Mack enjoyed tremendous popular success combining the three-dimensional qualities of full-round sculpture with the bas-relief (low relief) of the backgrounds to create the sense of emergence. Mack's success has become world-wide. He has exhibited in Tokyo, New York, Beverly Hills, Frankfurt and his works are included in the private collections of Presidents Ford, Reagan and Clinton, Sylvester Stallone, Tony Curtis, Elizabeth Taylor and Kenny Rogers, as well as many others. He has sculptures on display in the NFL, NBA, NHL and Tennis Halls of Fame, the Statue of Liberty National Monument and have been featured in movies and television.