Strolling along the water’s edge, you see something jagged, wooden or shiny caught in the tide. You give it a moment’s 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’s 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’t working in the garage-cum-studio adjacent to his and his artist wife’s cottage house a couple of blocks from the beach, he’s out scouring the land for the building blocks of his trade. “I’m not sourcing my materials from a store or a lumberyard,” said Mackey, 29. “I like that I’m 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’s 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’s 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 — “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’s been successful in the bargain. His works vary in price, but some have sold for $500 and up. “I wouldn’t say I’m profiting very much,” he said. “I’m breaking even.” But that’s not why Mackey does what he does. “I create for the purpose of sharing with other people,” he said. To scour Mackey’s cluttered workshop, which boasts a nautical theme, is to find oneself in the company of driftwood birds — most small, though he recently sold one that was 7 feet tall — 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’ve 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 … well, the beach is only two blocks away.
