Strolling along the water\u2019s edge, you see something jagged, wooden or shiny caught in the tide. You give it a moment\u2019s notice and you move on. Not Ryder Mackey. This La Jolla High graduate sees “living materials” that he can transform into artistic expression. “Anything that looks like there\u2019s a bit of a story to it” catches the eye of this Pacific Beach artist, who works strictly with found objects like driftwood, rebar and reclaimed steel. Mackey is a fixture, selling his work at the La Jolla Open Aire Market, held Sundays at La Jolla Elementary School. His work ranges from driftwood sculptures of birds to wall hangings to custom copper earrings. When Mackey isn\u2019t working in the garage-cum-studio adjacent to his and his artist wife\u2019s cottage house a couple of blocks from the beach, he\u2019s out scouring the land for the building blocks of his trade. “I\u2019m not sourcing my materials from a store or a lumberyard,” said Mackey, 29. “I like that I\u2019m using recyclables. All the materials are local and fairly indigenous to here.” For Mackey, who has no formal artistic education but possesses no end of spontaneous inspiration, his creation process is an organic one. His art is “nature-based. There\u2019s something very human and essential to our own nature in it.” The starting point for a sculpture or a wall hanging might be the body of a broken violin, or rebar discarded during a construction project, or “driftwood that\u2019s been washing around in the tides,” Mackey said. His artistic spark was ignited, he said, by living near the ocean and finding himself attracted to things he discovered on the beach \u2014 “all sorts of driftwood and randomness,” he calls it. Acquiring a booth at the La Jolla Open Aire Market five months ago was a means toward disciplining his craftsmanship. “I decided I wanted to give myself the challenge of having an event to push me,” he said. He\u2019s been successful in the bargain. His works vary in price, but some have sold for $500 and up. “I wouldn\u2019t say I\u2019m profiting very much,” he said. “I\u2019m breaking even.” But that\u2019s not why Mackey does what he does. “I create for the purpose of sharing with other people,” he said. To scour Mackey\u2019s cluttered workshop, which boasts a nautical theme, is to find oneself in the company of driftwood birds \u2014 most small, though he recently sold one that was 7 feet tall \u2014 a fish made of wood and rebar that looks like a giant fishing lure, and rusty objects that spoke of years untold, given new life by the artist. “I\u2019ve always been drawn to working with my hands and working with whatever was laying around,” Mackey said, standing among his works-in-progress. When he runs out of materials \u2026 well, the beach is only two blocks away.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Strolling along the water\u2019s edge, you see something jagged, wooden or shiny caught in the tide. You give it a moment\u2019s notice and you move on. Not Ryder Mackey. This La Jolla High graduate sees “living materials” that he can transform into artistic expression. “Anything that looks like there\u2019s a bit of a story to […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":274756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"Pacific Beach found-object artist carving out successes with his creations","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559,11551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beach-bay-press","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}